A new star, named HD41004, has been discovered - and Arutz-7 talked with one of those who found it, Astronomy Prof. Tzvi Mazeh of Tel Aviv University. In addition to the star, Mazeh said, a planet and a Brown Dwarf [a body formed from gas, like a star, but more like a planet in that it does not give off its own light - ed. note] were also found around the star. The distance from Earth: more than 100 light-years from here.
Asked by Arutz-7's Haggai Segal how it is that the system was not discovered until now, Prof. Mazeh explained, "Planets around other stars and suns are very hard to discover, because they are very far and very dim compared to the light being given off around it. It's like trying to find a little spark around a 2-million watt projector light..."
So how did he do it? "First of all," Prof. Mazeh said, "it wasn't just me. Our international team, including Dr. Shai Tzucker, who is listed first on the paper we are writing, did it together. We took the data of the star that we painstakingly amassed with the best telescopes in the world, and analyzed the data with a special system that we developed here. We then found that the sun had moved a little - evidence that there was a planet next to it."
Prof. Mazeh said that some of the newly-discovered planets are not at all like Earth: "For instance, we can discover new planets only if they are very large - the size of Jupiter. In our solar system, these large planets are very far from the sun, while the new large planets are very close to their suns. The temperature there is over 1,000 degrees Centigrade."
Asked if he believes that life might be found on another planet, Prof. Mazeh said guardedly that it appears at present that conditions enabling life could be found on other planets. "As a religious Jew," Segal asked, "would you have a problem if life was in fact found elsewhere?" "Not at all," Prof. Mazeh responded. "When it was first discovered that there were Indians in the Western Hemisphere, did that cause a problem? G-d can create life anywhere& The real question is whether there is conscious life, i.e., creatures that are capable of thinking about their own existence, and whether there is civilization with technology..."
Asked about the apparent contradiction between the age of the world according to Jewish sources - 5,763 years - and the light-years of time according to science, Prof. Mazeh said that the precise age of the world is a "small detail." "We [believers] are in a much better position today than, say, Maimonides, who faced a science that said that the world was not created, but was instead 'always there.' Today, we have proofs that the world was in fact created, just as the Torah says. The exact age is just a small detail..."