Icy Super Earth

Time to rework the standard models.

An international collaboration of astronomers has discovered a "super-Earth" orbiting in the cold outer regions of a distant solar system about 9,000 light-years away. The planet weighs 13 times as much as Earth, and at -330 degrees Fahrenheit, it's one of the coldest planets ever discovered outside our solar system.

Andrew Gould, leader of the MicroFUN collaboration and professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, pointed to two key implications of the discovery. "First," Gould said, "this icy super-Earth dominates the region around its star that in our solar system is populated by the gas-giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn. We've never seen a system like this before, because we've never had the means to find them."

"And second," he added, "these icy super-Earths are pretty common. Roughly 35 percent of all stars have them."

Icy super-Earths may be as much as three times more common than Jupiter-type gas giants, which are easier to detect.