Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.
The
artist's concept depicts Kepler-186f , the first validated Earth-size
planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone. [Click link below
for more.]
Image Credit:
NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech
While planets have previously been found in the habitable zone, they are all at least 40 percent larger in size than Earth and understanding their makeup is challenging. Kepler-186f is more reminiscent of Earth.
"The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind's quest to find truly Earth-like worlds."
Although the size of Kepler-186f is known, its mass and composition are not. Previous research, however, suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky.
"We know of just one planet where life exists -- Earth. When we search for life outside our solar system we focus on finding planets with characteristics that mimic that of Earth," said Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper published today in the journal Science. "Finding a habitable zone planet comparable to Earth in size is a major step forward."
The
diagram compares the planets of our inner solar system to Kepler-186, a
five-planet star system about 500 light-years from Earth in the
constellation Cygnus. The five planets of Kepler-186 orbit an M dwarf, a
star that is is half the size and mass of the sun. [Click link below
for more.]
Image Credit:
NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech
Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system, about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home to four companion planets, which orbit a star half the size and mass of our sun. The star is classified as an M dwarf, or red dwarf, a class of stars that makes up 70 percent of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.It was only a matter of time before the scientific instruments, imagination, and new means to discover such small, rocky, planets were to take place. Now that we've discovered our first, Earth-like planet, I'm excited to hear when more will be discovered, or the discovery of liquid water on such planets, or even an oxygen atmosphere. Then we can truly say that we are no longer alone in the universe. Life exists on this neighboring star!
We just need to build one of these to to pay a visit:
Download Star Trek Enterprise into White Noise. whitenoisemarket.com
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