ZCZC
BFF-08
PLANETS-MILKY-WAY
Planets beyond Milky Way spotted
HOUSTON, Feb 3, 2018 (BSS/Xinhua) — A University of Oklahoma astrophysics
team has discovered a population of planets beyond the Milky Way galaxy.
Using microlensing — an astronomical phenomenon and the only known method
capable of discovering planets at great distances from the Earth — the
researchers were able to detect objects in extragalactic galaxies that range
from the mass of the Moon to the mass of Jupiter, according to a press
release by the US university.
Xinyu Dai, professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and
Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, with postdoctoral researcher
Eduardo Guerras, made the discovery with data from the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
“We are very excited about this discovery,” said Dai. “These small planets
are the best candidate for the signature we observed in this study using the
microlensing technique.”
The university claimed that there has been no evidence of planets in other
galaxies until this study.
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