Scientists Discover Potentially Habitable Planets
For the first time, scientists and researchers have discovered potentially habitable planets near to us - well relatively near: 40 light years may seem far away, but it is nothing when relative to the rest of the galaxy and universe! On May 5, Michaël Gillon of the University of Liège in Belgium began looking at an ultra-cool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1 (the temperature of TRAPPIST-1 is about 2550 Kelvin while our sun is 5778 Kelvin). This star had been relatively overlooked by most scientists and telescopes like Kepler, because it is a dwarf star- only slightly bigger than Jupiter- and is vastly different than our own sun. However, when Gillon pointed the university’s telescope at TRAPPIST-1 for over 60 days to research the stars composition, he made a fascinating discovery. Every now and then, the light emitted from the star would drop ever so slightly (less than 1 percent). At first this may seem like an anomaly, but these dips occurred in pattern-like intervals. These repeating dips in light are a good indicator of planets orbiting the star. This method of discovering planets is known as the transit method and is one of the most effective ways of finding planets (using light dips). Now that Gillon knew that there were planets in the system, he was able to calculate their relative sizes based on light blocked and also their orbit around the dwarf star. By using these calculations, he found that all three planets discovered were rock planets (planets composed of solid surface that can be landed on) by analyzing the spectroscopy of the light passing through all three planets atmospheres, all relatively close to the size of earth, and all within the star’s habitable zone. This means that all three planets could have water and even could have life or support human life. Even though we cannot travel there now with our current technology, it is an important system to research and later travel to.
Works Cited
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/666277/Earth-like-planets-harbour-life-discovered-orbiting-dwarf-star
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/02/health/three-habitable-planets-earth-dwarf-star/index.html
http://news.mit.edu/2016/scientists-discover-potentially-habitable-planets-0502
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/multimedia/images/transit-light-curve.html