With help from ground based telecopes and NASAs Spritzer Telescope, Astronomers have made a major discovery detecting seven Earth-like exoplanets orbiting a single star. 3 of these planets lie in the habitable zone, and as they are Rocky they are likely to have liquid water on them. These exoplanets could be a significant target to look for alien life.
The star is called TRAPPIST-1, which is a small low-mass cool dwarf star located 40 light years away in the constellation aquarius. Its radius is only 11% of that of our sun, making it around the same size as Jupiter.
The seven planets orbiting the star, are currently just named b,c,d,e,f,g and h. They are all thought to be rocky, so could potentially hold liquid water, which is the key to sustaining life and, as a result, is what makes them a key target in our search for extra-terrestrial life. They are extremely close together in their orbit of the star, and all their orbits would fit inside Mercury’s orbit of our Sun. They are close enough together that you could look up on one of the planets and see the rest of them sitting in the sky similar to how the moon looks to us. The length of their years ranges from 1.5 days to 20 days and All of them have a side constantly facing the sun so one side is always bathed in sun and the other in darkness.
Nasa are launching the James Webb telescope in 2018 which could further our knowledge of these planets by looking out for the chemical signatures of water, methane and oxygen on any of the planets.
This discovery hints that there may be more similar planets to Earth in the universe than astronomers previously thought, giving the prospect of alien life more promise than ever before.
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