The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has detected 219 possible new planets in our galaxy, of which ten may be habitable like the Earth, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. Scientists discovered the possible new planets using Nasa’s Kepler Space Telescope, when the telescope scanned some 2,00,000 stars in the Cygnus constellation.
“An important question for us is, ‘Are we alone?,” Kepler program scientist Mario Perez told Reuters after the discovery. “Maybe Kepler today is telling us indirectly, that we are not alone.”
The discovery of 219 new “candidates” for planets takes the total number of such bodies in our galaxy up to 4,034. Of these, 49 are thought to be habitable – meaning liquid water can pool on the surface and life may be able to thrive. Of the 4,034 “candidates”, over half have already been identified as “exoplanets” – planets orbiting around a star outside the solar system – since the Kepler telescope was launched in 2009. Several of these planets orbit G dwarfs - the same species of star as the sun. One, called KOI 7711, is a possible “Earth twin”, just 30 times bigger.
The planets are also different in size and composition. The Kepler team has found that planets that are about 1.75 times the size of Earth and smaller tend to be rocky, while those that are two to 3.5 times the size of Earth are more gaseous. These have been dubbed “super-earths” and “mini-Neptunes” respectively.
With the final batch of observations from the Kepler telescope now available, scientists can work on answering whether earth-like planets are common or rare in the universe. This will in turn increase the chances of ascertaining the possibility of life on other planets.
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