PHOTO: NASA’s Spitzer Telescope discovers seven new Earth like planets, insisting there could be life out there
The seven discovered
planets, is said to be a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone
planets found around a single star outside our solar system....
...as three out of
the seven, are firmly located in habitable zone... the area around the parent
star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water.
According to NASA, all
of these seven planets could have liquid water key to life, as under the right
atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the
habitable zone...
Thomas Zurbuchen who is the associate administrator of the
agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, while speaking on this,
said:
“This discovery could
be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places
that are conducive to life,”
. “Answering the
question ‘are we alone’ is a top science priority and finding so many planets
like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step
forward toward that goal.”
At about 40
light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is
relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located
outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as
exoplanets.
This exoplanet system
is called TRAPPIST-1, named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small
Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile., researchers using TRAPPIST announced they had
discovered three planets in the system.
Assisted by several ground-based
telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope,
Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of these planets and discovered five
additional ones, increasing the number of known planets in the system to seven.
The
new results were published Wednesday in the journal Nature, and announced at a
news briefing at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Source:NASA.gov
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