Astronomers have discovered eight new planets that could support life in distant solar systems.
The discovery was made by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope.
The Earth-like worlds are known as ‘exoplanets’ – a term to define planets found orbiting stars other than our own – and take the total to 1,000.
However, this latest discovery of eight planets includes two that have been deemed the closest in similarity to Earth ever found.
All eight orbit a star and are in what is known as the ‘Goldilocks zone’ – the area where exoplanets are at the right distance from the star to keep water in a liquid state.
Scientists believe that of these, two stand out as being potentially alien earths with rocky surfaces.
Study co-author Doug Caldwell, SETI Institute Kepler scientist said in a statement: “With each new discovery of these small, possibly rocky worlds, our confidence strengthens in the determination of the true frequency of planets like Earth.
“The day is on the horizon when we’ll know how common temperate, rocky planets like Earth are.”
Astronomers have discovered eight new planets that could support life in distant solar systems.
The discovery was made by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope.
The Earth-like worlds are known as ‘exoplanets’ – a term to define planets found orbiting stars other than our own – and take the total to 1,000.
However, this latest discovery of eight planets includes two that have been deemed the closest in similarity to Earth ever found.
All eight orbit a star and are in what is known as the ‘Goldilocks zone’ – the area where exoplanets are at the right distance from the star to keep water in a liquid state.
Scientists believe that of these, two stand out as being potentially alien earths with rocky surfaces.
Study co-author Doug Caldwell, SETI Institute Kepler scientist said in a statement: “With each new discovery of these small, possibly rocky worlds, our confidence strengthens in the determination of the true frequency of planets like Earth.
“The day is on the horizon when we’ll know how common temperate, rocky planets like Earth are.”
Astronomers have discovered eight
new planets that could support life in distant solar systems.
The discovery was made by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope.
The Earth-like worlds are known as ‘exoplanets’ – a term to define planets found orbiting stars other than our own – and take the total to 1,000.
However, this latest discovery of eight planets includes two that have been deemed the closest in similarity to Earth ever found.
All eight orbit a star and are in what is known as the ‘Goldilocks zone’ – the area where exoplanets are at the right distance from the star to keep water in a liquid state.
Scientists believe that of these, two stand out as being potentially alien earths with rocky surfaces.
Study co-author Doug Caldwell, SETI Institute Kepler scientist said in a statement: “With each new discovery of these small, possibly rocky worlds, our confidence strengthens in the determination of the true frequency of planets like Earth.
“The day is on the horizon when we’ll know how common temperate, rocky planets like Earth are.”
By Gary Hendricks
With thanks to Billionaires Australia
The discovery was made by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope.
The Earth-like worlds are known as ‘exoplanets’ – a term to define planets found orbiting stars other than our own – and take the total to 1,000.
However, this latest discovery of eight planets includes two that have been deemed the closest in similarity to Earth ever found.
All eight orbit a star and are in what is known as the ‘Goldilocks zone’ – the area where exoplanets are at the right distance from the star to keep water in a liquid state.
Scientists believe that of these, two stand out as being potentially alien earths with rocky surfaces.
Study co-author Doug Caldwell, SETI Institute Kepler scientist said in a statement: “With each new discovery of these small, possibly rocky worlds, our confidence strengthens in the determination of the true frequency of planets like Earth.
“The day is on the horizon when we’ll know how common temperate, rocky planets like Earth are.”
By Gary Hendricks
With thanks to Billionaires Australia
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Additional information from The Australian - Pay wall:
EIGHT new planets have been found orbiting their stars in the so-called “Goldilocks zone,” neither too hot nor too cold for water and possibly life to exist, astronomers say.
The discovery doubles the number of known planets that are close in size to the Earth and believed to be in the habitable zones of the stars they orbit.
Two of the eight are the most Earth-like of any known planets found so far outside our solar system, astronomers told the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington today.
“Most of these planets have a good chance of being rocky, like Earth,” said lead author Guillermo Torres of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.
The worlds were found with the help of NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission.
But since the planets were all too small to be confirmed by measuring their masses, scientists used a computer program called BLENDER to determine that they are statistically likely to be planets, the centre said in a statement.
The same program “has been used previously to validate some of Kepler’s most iconic finds, including the first two Earth-size planets around a sun-like star and the first exoplanet smaller than Mercury,” it said.
While it is intriguing to consider the possibility of life existing on another planet like ours, the two best candidates are so far away that learning more about them presents a big challenge. Kepler-438b is circling its star at a distance of 470 light-years from Earth. The other, Kepler-442b, is 1100 light-years away.
“We don’t know for sure whether any of the planets in our sample are truly habitable,” said second author David Kipping, also of Harvard-Smithsonian.
“All we can say is that they’re promising candidates.”
