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C. Pulliam and D. Aguilar / CfA
An artist's illustration represents the variety of planets being detected by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, from worlds smaller than Earth up to Jupiter-type gas giants.
NASA's Kepler space telescope has uncovered another 461 potential new planets, most of which are the size of Earth or a few times larger, scientists said Monday.
The announcement brings Kepler's head count to 2,740 candidate new worlds, 105 of which have been confirmed.
"Two years ago we had around 1,200 candidate planet objects. A year later, we added a significant number of new objects and saw the trend of huge numbers of very small planets ... twice the size of Earth and smaller," Kepler astronomer Christopher Burke told a news conference webcast from the American Astronomical Society conference in Long Beach, Calif.
With the addition of 461 new candidate planets, collected over 22 months of Kepler telescope observations, the proliferation of smaller planets continues.
The new targets include KOI-172.02, a planet candidate that's about 1.5 times bigger than Earth and circles its sunlike parent star in a 242-day orbit. At that distance, liquid water, believed to be necessary for life, could exist on the potential planet's surface.
A Jupiter-sized planet known as PH2 b, discovered by citizen scientists participating in the Planet Hunters project, lies within its parent star's habitable zone.
"This is just a first step toward finding a habitable world elsewhere," Ji Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University and the lead author of a paper about PH2 b, said in a news release. "Any moon around this newly discovered, Jupiter-sized planet might be habitable. It’s very similar to what was depicted in the movie ‘Avatar’ — the habitable moon Pandora around a giant planet, Polyphemus.”
The Planet Hunters group also reported finding 42 candidate planets, including 15 that lie within habitable zones.
The goal of the Kepler mission, which began in 2009, is to determine how many stars in the Milky Way galaxy have an Earth-sized planet orbiting in so-called habitable zones, where water can exist on its surface.
"You need very specific conditions to have liquid water. You can't have your planet too close to your star where it's too hot. You can't have it too far away for the planet conditions to be too cold. We're trying to find these planets in this very specific habitable zone," said Burke, who is with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.
The Kepler telescope works by tracking slight decreases in the amount of light coming from 160,000 target stars caused by a planet or planets passing by, or transiting, relative to the telescope's point of view.
Earth-sized planets located about where Earth orbits the sun would take 365 days to circle their parent star. Those located closer, in Mercury-type 88-day orbits, transit more frequently. Scientists need at least two and preferably three or more cycles to determine whether an apparent transit is real or some other phenomena.
The Kepler roster also boosts the number of multiplanet systems. Of the 2,740 objects, 299 are in dual-planet systems, 112 are in triplets, 44 are part of four-planet systems, 11 systems have five planets and one system has six planets.
More about the planet quest:
- Our galaxy has at least 17 billion alien Earths
- 'Exocomets' common across the Milky Way
- Alien planets face danger from double-star systems
- Cosmic Log archive on the planet search
This report includes information from NBC News. Reuters content: Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Check for restrictions at http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
Leave a Comment:
They look like wallpaper samples, that green would be nice in the bathroom!
I get all my planets from Big, Bang, and Beyond. Free delivery!
Sea Foam Green in a bathroom? Is it 1992?
Ah, the 1000's... what a great millenium!
How soon till god is discovered on these planets?
I would love to move to another planet
To bad all the world gov. wouldn't get together and make real space travel to these planets possible.Nothing human beings can't do when we work together.
Wait till asteroid mining takes off and corporations start sending their own astronauts into space. I know it's a bit cynical but most of the first American settlers came over as part of some business venture or another.
Great. Far out. The way mankind is conducting itself we'll never make it off this rock in time. Rome burns and we shoot for the stars.
What a job! Looking through a telescope and using your imagination on what a potential planet looks like. I bet every first grade class in America could do it!
^ This, ladies and gentlemen, is what is wrong with our world.
There's a little more to it than that. A significant amount of higher mathematics goes into astronomy.
Though I do agree that a field trip to a planetarium or observatory, with an assignment to make up your own planet/what kind of life is found there would be fun for an elementary school class.
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At the rate we're going, we're going to need another habitable planet. Although we may have to share if said planet already has a thinking populace.
GOD'S Wonderment !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Future generations will consider this the Golden Age of planetary discovery. I have no doubt that we will find strong evidence of life on other planets in my lifetime. Unfortunately, probably not intelligent life.
I'm still waiting for them to find intelligent life on this planet!!!!
with so many planets that are earth like, it makes for a good theory that yes, there is other intelligent life out there.
461 more potential planets, that's good. At the rate we are destroying this one, we are going to need somewhere else to go.
Sure, it is a known FACT that we humans are draining this planet of its energy, at a phenominal rate.
No dispute, there.
It, also seems hilarious that we are searching for other planets while we have NO program in place, to even design, let alone, BUILD, the ships, we would need, in order to Abandon Earth.
We continue to spend trillions of dollars on bombs, bullets, fighter craft, and blowing one another up.
The real question we should be considering is: Even if we DID have viable space-craft, WHO should be sent, to a new world, and WHO would be left, to perish, on Earth?
With our planets current population, I estimate that it could take 500, maybe 600 years to build ships, to move the entire population.
That is, ofcourse, contingent on what decision the Pope decides to make, for Earth's Catholics. Even if the Vatican ordered all Catholics to remain on Earth, during an evacuation, this would, still, leave un-counted masses, to be transported.
We have NO Starfleet, or Battlestars, for such an evacuation.
Why even consider other planets when we dont even have the ability to reach for our own moon, anylonger, let alone reach for another planet.
And, lets not forget that we only have impulse power, for sub-light speed. This could mean a crew spending as much as a century in freezers, while in route to a new planet. And that is contingent upon a planet being very CLOSE to Earth.
I really think that these should be our top priorities, in planetary exploration, NOT the infantile question of: Did "God" get there, first?
We will need ships, supplies, and competent crews, for such voyages, NOT meaningless dieties. Faith will NOT seal a hull rupture (NOT Rapture, rupture), nor will faith repair life support, or damaged engines. Only human hands and feet, will repair ships, while in flight.
Ships, supplies, and competent crews. Whoops! We forgot one tiny big of info. We do not have any propulsion system or anywhere near the technology to get us to a star. There is a 100 year plan to come up with something but there is no guarantee that we will ever have any technology that will send us to the stars. For at least the next 100 years, we are stuck here and we had better do what we can to make a better world for ourselves. Americans are spending 632 billion dollars per year on equipment to kill people. I think it would be better to spend that money on developing new technology that will help us and not kill us.
Once we kill all the people who want to kill people, we can finally make some progress.
Who cares how many new planets are found. Even IF we were ever able to get to them how would people survive? The every day things that would make life possible would be Impossible to get. I think the people who believe that moving to another planet is an option had better find better things to do.
When we manage to get to them, we'll be able to survive. It will be part of the process, why go if you can't survive? We'll do it eventually, probably not in our lifetimes.