BEER Method Of Finding Planets Scores Its First Discovery
Monday, May 13, 2013 - 15:01
in Astronomy & Space
Detecting alien worlds is a significant challenge since they are small, faint, and close to their stars. The two most prolific techniques for finding exoplanets are radial velocity (looking for wobbling stars) and transits (looking for dimming stars). A team at Tel Aviv University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has just discovered an exoplanet and the planet they found, Kepler-76b, was identified by the BEER algorithm; an acronym for relativistic BEaming, Ellipsoidal, and Reflection/emission modulations. BEER was developed by Professor Tsevi Mazeh and his student, Simchon Faigler, at Tel Aviv University in Israel and is a new method that relies on Einstein's special theory of relativity. read more