Question

British astronomers discovered a new planet.​

Answer 1

Answer:

Discovery of Uranus

The planet Uranus was discovered by the noted British astronomer, Sir William Herschel, on March 13, 1781. Actually, the planet had been observed numerous times by other astronomers as early as 1690, but it was thought to be another star.

Answer 2

Astronomers have glimpsed what may be a previously unknown planet circling one of the closest stars to Earth.

Researchers spotted the bright dot near Alpha Centauri A, one of a pair of stars that swing around each other so tightly they appear as one in the southern constellation of Centaurus. The stars form what is called a binary system 4.37 light years away, a mere stone’s throw in cosmic terms.

Advertisement

So tentative is the sighting that scientists are referring to it only as a “planet candidate”, aware that the bright speck in the darkness of space may be evidence of alien asteroids, streaks of dust, or more prosaically, an unforeseen glitch in their equipment.

“We detected something,” said Pete Klupar, the chief engineer of the Breakthrough Initiatives, which are a raft of space projects funded by Yuri Milner, an entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. “It could be an artefact in the machine or it could be a planet, or it could be asteroids or dust.”