NASA Announces Discovery of Seven Earth-like Exoplanets
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has made an announcement about a very recent discovery of seven Earth-size planets, together in one system. Three of them could possibly have liquid water, a key to life on Earth.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope confirmed the discovery of the planets orbiting a star in the constellation Aquarius. The star, a variant called as an ultra-cool dwarf star, is approximately 40 light-years or about 378 trillion kilometers from planet Earth. Despite the enormous distance, the star is, in an intergalactic perspective, relatively close to the Solar System — close enough to discern the seven planets orbiting around it.
These planets, being outside the Solar System, are termed exoplanets. The star and its accompanying system have been named TRAPPIST-1, after the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) installed in Chile which has made the initial discovery of three of the planets in May last year.
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The Spitzer Space telescope, with the help of other telescopes around the world, verified the discovery by TRAPPIST and spotted five more planets in the system, for a total of seven confirmed bodies circling the dwarf star, according to NASA's press release.
According to Michael Gillon, lead author of the discovery paper that's been published in the Nature Journal, "The seven wonders of TRAPPIST-1 are the first Earth-size planets that have been found orbiting this kind of star ... It is also the best target yet for studying the atmospheres of potentially habitable, Earth-size worlds."
Using the additional information gathered by the Spitzer telescope, the Belgium-based exoplanet survey team could accurately measure the sizes of the seven planets. Based on their estimate on the densities of the planets, they have come to the conclusion that all of the TRAPPIST-1 bodies are probably the rocky type, like our planet.
Six of the exoplanets could orbit a "temperate" zone where temperatures can range from zero to 100 degrees Celsius — and three of them can potentially have liquid water, according to Telegraph.
Watch NASA's video about TRAPPIST-1 below.
