A team of scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has announced the discovery of eight new planets located in the zone known as Goldilocks.
According to the scientists, two of the eight new planets are the most similar-to-earth planets ever discovered.
Guillermo Torres, one of the scientists involved in the research, said that most of the newly found planets are rocky and resemble our planet very much.
The scientists named two of the planets Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, and say these two are the most similar to earth of all the eight new planets.
According to the researchers, these two planets orbit a red dwarf star that is smaller and colder than the Sun.
The scientists explained that the Kepler-438b planet has a 35-day year and Kepler-442b orbits once every 112 days.
Both of these planets have smaller orbits, which means that their years are shorter than what we have on earth.
Torres explained that:
“For our calculations, we chose to adopt the broadest possible limits that can plausibly lead to suitable conditions for life”.
According to the scientists’ theories and calculations, there is a 70% chance that Kepler-438b could be habitable, while Kepler-442b has a 97% chance of hosting an environment similar to earth’s.
At the moment the scientists discovered 1,876 planets that are orbiting around stars that is not the earth’s sun. Also, the researchers believe that there are at least twice as many planets waiting to be discovered.
Out of those 1,876 confirmed planets, most of them have been discovered using the Kepler telescope.
The Kepler telescope was designed especially for observing a portion of the Milky Way galaxy in search of other planets that are earth-like in size and could host a habitable environment.
One of the most common methods used by the scientists to discover other planets is to detect big planets that are in close proximity to their parent stars. These parent stars are known to the scientists as being “hot Jupiters”.
According to the NASA experts, there is an abundance of such planets on the lists of discovered extrasolar planetary systems.
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