Fertile ground for alien life
IS this an intergalactic housing estate? Seven Earth-sized worlds have been found orbiting a single star 39 light-years away. And these new worlds could hold life.
The red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, which sits in the constellation of Aquarius and is barely the size of Jupiter, was thought a year ago to have three planets in orbit around it.
This initial discovery caused scientists to keep a close eye on the star. But now a study published in the science journal Nature has exposed a wealth of worlds that are generally thought of as being rare.
NASA made the incredible announcement yesterday that there are seven Earth-sized exoplanets around the one star. All are thought to be mostly made up of rock and could potentially support liquid water on their surfaces.
Three are close to the star, and may be a little too hot to hold much liquid water.
One — the seventh — may be an ice world.
But three of them fall comfortably in the “habitable zone” — orbits neither too hot nor too cold.
That means they may have strong potential to sustain life as we know it.
“This is really the first time we have seven planets that we can say are in the terrestrial zone, and it’s really, really surprising,” said study co-author and astronomer at the Universite de Liege in Belgium, Michael Gillon.
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Sci- ence Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said: “The discovery gives us a hint that finding a second Earth is not just a matter of if, but when.
“Are we alone out there? We are making a leap forward to answering this question.”
The takeaway from all this is, “we’ve made a crucial step toward finding if there is life out there,” said the University of Cambridge’s Amaury Tri- aud, one of the researchers.
The potential for more Earth-size planets in our Milky Way galaxy is mind-boggling.
Scientists made the discovery using the Spitzer space telescope.
Following the announcement, NASA tweeted: “Finding life elsewhere is one of three overarching goals for @NASA science. We are in the middle of a ‘gold-rush’ of this research right now.”