Hamartia Antidote
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2013
- Messages
- 35,188
- Reaction score
- 30
- Country
- Location
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_%28spacecraft%29
http://www.mirror.co.uk/science/nasas-kepler-space-telescope-discovers-7940109
NASA's Kepler mission has announced the discovery of over 1,200 new planets – the single largest finding of planets to date.
The discovery more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler, giving scientists hope that they may eventually discover another Earth-like planet that could harbour life.
Of the 1,284 discovered, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size, according to NASA.
Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable "Goldilocks" zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool.
With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this exclusive group.
"They say not to count our chickens before they're hatched, but that's exactly what these results allow us to do," said Natalie Batalha, co-author of the paper and the Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
"This work will help Kepler reach its full potential by yielding a deeper understanding of the number of stars that harbor potentially habitable, Earth-size planets- a number that's needed to design future missions to search for habitable environments and living worlds."
Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets.
For four years, the Kepler space telescope monitored 150,000 stars in a single patch of sky, measuring the tiny, telltale dip in the brightness of a star that can be produced by a transiting planet.
However, there's a huge difference between finding a planet that looks a bit like Earth and discovering life.
Current telescopes simply aren't powerful enough to scrutinise these planets closely enough to detect the presence of liquid water or oxygen produced by photosynthesis.
Of the nearly 5,000 total planet candidates found to date, more than 3,200 now have been verified, and 2,325 of these were discovered by Kepler.
"Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy," said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters.
"Thanks to Kepler and the research community, we now know there could be more planets than stars.
"This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever-closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe."
Last edited:
I wish Nasa would double down or even triple down on a follow up to Kepler.
