NASA has just announced the discovery of 10 rocky, Earth-sized planets in our galaxy – Milky Way. These planets could potentially have liquid water and thus, support life.
The US space agency released a survey of 219 potential exoplanets – planets outside of our solar system – that had been detected by its Kepler space telescope through its first four years in space, since its launch in 2009. Nasa launched the Kepler telescope to learn if Earth-like planets are common or rare.
From the potential exoplanets, 10 of them were orbiting their suns at a distance similar to Earth’s orbit around the sun. This is the so-called habitable zone, which implies surface temperature could support liquid water and probably, life.
Its possible that Kepler has indirectly implied that we are not alone in the galaxy, as told by Kepler scientist Mario Perez in a news conference.
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The following message and video was posted by NASA’s official page on twitter.
#ICYMI: Earlier, we identified 219 potential new worlds from @NASAKepler data, ten of which are near-Earth size: https://t.co/Lh0O09jc0G pic.twitter.com/1bEFpXcrBy
— NASA (@NASA) June 20, 2017
“It implies that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone around sun-like stars are not rare,” Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who was not part of the work, told the news agency.
Kepler’s data also provides a new way to assess whether a planet has a solid surface, like Earth, or is made mostly of gas, like Neptune. This distinction will allows scientists to narrow down potential Earth-like planets and improve chances of finding life.
Kepler is the first space telescope capable of finding Earth-sized planets in or near the habitable zone.
NASA stated that the eight release of the survey has been the most comprehensive so far, including 4,034 planets that are potential candidates so far with 2,335 confirmed planets and another 1,699 candidates. Among these, 50 worlds are about the same size and temperature as Earth.
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Along with Kepler, other methods of finding habitable planets also exist. Using all of them, scientists have confirmed the discovery of about 3,600 exoplanets and 62 potentially habitable ones. It is safe to say that NASA is making ground-breaking discoveries that may change the course of our future as we know it.
Before its launch, astronomers had hoped that frequency of Earth-like planets would be about one percent of the stars, however scientists now believe it is closer to 60 percent.
“This number could have been very, very small,” said Caltech astronomer Courtney Dressing. “I, for one, am ecstatic.”