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11. On the Composition of Wolf 1061c
Sun Dec 20, 2015, 11:44 PM
Dec 2015

While the press release asserts the planet is likely rocky, I'm not so sure. There's a couple objections I have:

1) While we're still populating the Mass-Radius parameter space, several of the planets that are several times the mass of Earth are turning out to be low-density, puffy "mini-Neptune"-type planets. See [url=]this Mass-Radius diagram[/url] for example.


2) The method that detected the planets at Wolf 1061 does not provide us with the true masses of its planets, but rather the minimum mass. The true mass of the planet depends on the inclination of the planet's orbital plane against the plane of the sky, such that an edge-on orbit is 90 degrees, and an orbit that we're viewing face-on would be 0 degrees. The true mass of the planet is equal to the derived minimum mass (which is the value quoted by this research) divided by the sine of the inclination (which is why planets detected through this method have masses that are talked about in terms of mp sin i, with mp being the unknown true mass). Since the true mass of the planet is almost certainly higher, this pushes it further toward the mini-Neptune class of planets that would rule out habitability.

So in summary, don't hold your breath for this one.

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