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NASA has announced new discoveries in the search for life on other planets. After discoveries by the Kepler telescope, scientists have announced the existence of three planets that are among the best candidates to support life. One of them may well be the most resembling alien planet to Earth so far.
The Kepler telescope, part of a satellite launched to continue our analysis of distant star systems, in order to answer the question "Are we alone?" Currently, the satellite tracks more than 150,000 stars for the purpose to identify potentially vital planets. Today's announcement focuses on the Kepler-62 star (which looks like the Earth's sun) and two of its five orbiting planets.
The two most interesting planets of the star are Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f. They are the farthest from the Kepler-62 planets. Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f "look very interesting for the search for life," said Bill Borucki, Kepler's scientific investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. According to estimates, Kepler-62f is 1.4 times larger than Earth, while Kepler-62e is about 1.6 times larger. This makes the pair the smallest planets ever identified in the "habitable zone" of a solar system. This is the area where the planets are at the right distance from their star to provide the greatest potential for liquid water essential for the maintenance of life. These two planets are described in a study published today in the newspaper Science.
The third planet, which was not part of the study, is Kepler-69c. It is about 1.7 times larger than the Earth and is the smallest planet ever identified in the habitable area of a sun-like star. Kepler-69c seems to be the closest that a foreign world has become to Earth. With each new discovery, "we are going very quickly towards the discovery of a terrestrial analogue similar to that of a star like the sun," Borucki said. Kepler-69c and its solar system are the subject of a study published in The astrophysical journal.
"Through all of these discoveries we are discovering, Earth is becoming less and less like a special place and more around the world," said Thomas Barclay, a Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Sonoma, California. . But before we begin to review your travel plans, it may take some time before these planets are on the tourist route. Kepler-62 is 1,200 light-years from Earth in the Lyra constellation and Kepler-69 is part of the Swan constellation and is 2,700 light-years away. A light-year is the distance that light will travel in a vacuum in one year, about 6,000 billion kilometers.
The Kepler telescope, launched in March 2009 at a cost of $ 600 million, was designed to search for Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of their star. It uses a technology that identifies small drops in brightness when the planet crosses the face of the star according to the instrumentation of the satellite. To date, Kepler has identified 2,700 planets that, in his view, meet the criteria. Of these 2,700 people, 122 were confirmed, although Kepler scientists estimate that 90% of them eventually will be.
Although Kepler's process can identify life-sustaining planets, he can not provide any information about the atmosphere on these planets or decide whether life is present or not. According to Barclay, "NASA's future missions will focus on closer stars that we can examine in much more detail." This discovery is an amazing announcement in our continuing quest to understand our place in heaven, but many questions remain unresolved. But Borucki assures us that "this is one of the first steps, but it's not a mistake, we're on the right track to explore the galaxy and learn more about life in the galaxy."
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