Kepler found planets better than Earth!
The vastness of the sea opens up new horizons. Crossing the plains during the different season
of the year inspires everyone. Snow on the mountains,
trees and plant growth in the jungles. Free animals run wild in nature. Some of them,
with time, learned to domesticate fire, built cities and put on common ideals. They started
wars, painted the Gioconda, erected the Great Wall, they managed to fly.
All of this happened ages after ages, season after season, under the same sky.
This, and much more, is Earth. Our planet home. And, for those who are out there,
(I mean if there is someone out there), Earth is just a pale blue dot, an anonymous
blue dot in the infinite of the universe, a fragile planet orbiting a pretty common star,
the Sun. And at the same time, the Sun is a grain of sand in a galaxy that we dubbed Milky Way.
In order to find us, those out there have to be very lucky.
Maybe one of “those out there” civilities is thinking about
the same things we have just stated. Maybe they are thinking about themselves
as a pale blue dot. Maybe, their planet
it's even better than our planet. Maybe, there are planets better than Earth.
That's exactly what recent studies on the Kepler mission data seem to suggest.
But how would these planets look? Which characteristics could it have?
Let's follow me to get to know the answer to these question, and more.
Kepler was a space telescope designed to survey a portion of the Milky Way galaxy
in search of exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.
Using data from the Kepler mission and the extended K2 mission,
scientists have identified more than 2,800 candidate planets and have confirmed more than
2,600 of these as bona fide exoplanets. A handful of planets are thought to be rocky like Earth (but
a bit bigger), and orbit in the habitable zone of their stars, where liquid water - an essential
ingredient of life as we know it - might exist. After nine years in deep space collecting data
that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets - more planets even than
stars - NASA's Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations.
NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler
leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system,
many of which could be promising places for life. They are the so-called “Earth-like” exoplanets.
NASA's Kepler mission revolutionized our scientific understanding of our place in
the cosmos by a huge amount of discoveries. Before Kepler, we had just a few information
about exoplanets. For example, how many planets are out there? Which planets are more common?
The big gaseous ones, as Jupiter? The ring-giant planets like Saturn?
And what about Venus-like planets? Do they exist just in our solar system? And if so, why?
All of these were very interesting questions, that needed to be answered.
But the universe is always a little bit more creative then we are.
Here's what we know after Kepler.
Planets outnumber the stars. Kepler has proven there are more planets than stars in our galaxy —
and knowing that revolutionizes our scientific understanding of our place in the cosmos.
Small planets are common. Kepler has shown us our galaxy is teeming with terrestrial-size worlds;
the most recent analysis of Kepler’s discoveries concludes that 20 to 50 per
cent of the stars in the sky are likely to have small, possibly rocky planets
similar in size to Earth within the habitable zone of their parent stars, where water could
pool on the planet surface. We still have much to learn about whether any of them could host life.
Planets are diverse. Kepler has discovered a diversity of planet types, opening our eyes to
new possibilities. The most common size of planet Kepler found doesn’t exist in our solar system — a
world between the size of Earth and Neptune — and we have much to learn about these planets.
Solar systems are diverse too! While our own inner solar system has four planets, Kepler
found systems with considerably more planets — up to eight — orbiting close to their parent stars.
The existence of these compact systems raises questions about how solar systems form:
Are these planets “born” close to their parent star, or do they form farther out and migrate in?
New insights revealed about stars. Besides launching us into the golden age of exoplanets,
Kepler has reinvigorated the study of stars.
Kepler observed more than a half-million stars over the course of its nine years in operation.
As you can see, if there's one thing that Kepler taught us,
was that out there, in the universe, things are different then we think.
But there are also common traits. That's why persevere in looking
for Earth-like planets, that could possibly host life as we know it.
As we've already said, actually Kepler detected a bunch of exoplanets.
A lot of them are hostile places for life as we know it.
On K2-141b it's raining rock! (We suggest you watch the video about
K2-141b! https://www.youtubeeD8C1qL4GnU.com/watch?v=eD8C1qL4GnU&t=96s )
Also, there are planets completely made of iron. ? There are planet brighter than some stars.
There are planets bigger than Jupiter orbiting so close to their star
and we don't know how to explain such strange behaviour.
But Kepler also found Earth-Like planets. Planets that taste like Home. Planets that
would appear to our eyes as very tiny blue dots. Because they own water. They are covered with
oceans and, who knows, maybe some of them is currently hosting some sort of life.
Earth-sized worlds orbiting at a safe distance from their host stars inside what’s known as
a habitable zone or Goldilocks zone were detected and studied by Kepler.
The goldilocks zone is where the temperatures are warm enough for water to condense
on their surfaces, but not so cold that it will just freeze up entirely.
Although being in this zone doesn’t guarantee the existence of life,
the presence of water is significant for the presence of life as we know it.
One such exoplanet discovered by Kepler that has recently generated excitement
among researchers is called K218b.
In September 2019, two scientific teams independently announced that they found signs
of liquid water in the planet’s atmosphere situated 124 light-years away from earth.
K218b is about eight times the mass of earth and three times as big.
It orbits a main sequence red dwarf star called k218:
But what's a red dwarf star? Well, a red dwarf star is the smallest
coolest star, and by far the most common type of star in the Milky Way.
According to Kepler's data, astronomers estimate that six per cent of red dwarf stars have an
earth-sized planet in the goldilocks zone! This means that life could exist in more
places than we currently think! This gives us a huge boost in
the finding of life. Who knows, maybe in the
next decades Kepler successors will finally prove that we are not alone in the universe!
But what method was used by Kepler to find K218b?
Looking for exoplanets, in the practice of research, almost never really translates into
looking for exoplanets. Rather, we observe the stars that seem optimal candidates to
host planetary systems, we study their light and break it down to look for traces of the presence
of other worlds. For example, you look at the way their light varies in intensity periodically due
to the transit of a body that does not emit light in front - the transits technique - or
if the star is moving a little here and there. disturbed by the gravitational influence of his
court - the technique of radial velocities. Kepler found K218b with the transit method.
Now a new study indicates that another exoplanet K186f, which lies 500 light-years away from us,
may also have seasons and a climate similar to our own.
Also, new research out of Georgia tech university has analyzed the planet’s spin and axial tilt
and found that its tilt is stable, just like the earth’s tilt.
This makes it likely that K186f also has regular seasons and a stable climate.
If you lived on that planet, you probably would not have any problem with changing seasons:
it will be pretty the same as here on Earth: autumn, winter, spring, summer and so on.
Similar research on the massive Kepler database is going on in universities all across the world.
In fact, in recent years previous Kepler findings that were rejected
as potential Earth-sized exoplanets due to algorithmic error are getting rediscovered.
These false positives are now slowly being reanalyzed in conjunction
with data from other telescopes. One such planet is kepler-1649c.
In mid-2020 while combing through old Kepler data and matching it against new
data from the “transiting exoplanet survey satellite” (also known as TESS), astronomers
confirmed the existence of another exoplanet. With very favourable conditions for life,
Kepler-1649c is located 300 light-years from earth.
It is very similar to earth in size and estimated temperature.
This newly revealed world is only 1.06 times larger than our own planet and the amount of
starlight it receives from its host star (which is also a red dwarf!) is 75 per cent of the
amount of light Earth receives from our sun. This means the exoplanet’s temperature may
be similar to our planets as well. Kepler-1649c provides yet another
example of an earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star!
Since the Kepler mission was dismissed, one may wonder “what's next?”
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Here are a bunch of things one should know about the current mission of studying exoplanets.
Tess The Transiting Exoplanet Survey
Satellite is a space telescope designed as part of NASA's Explorer program,
whose purpose is to search for exoplanets using the photometric method of transit.
The primary objective of the mission is to examine the brightest stars near the Earth
(within the 200 parsecs, approx 600 light-years) identifying, over a period of two years,
planets in transit in front of them. TESS uses a wide field of view lenses able to observe the
entire celestial vault. Thanks to TESS it will be possible,
with subsequent follow-up investigations, to study the mass, size, density, atmosphere and
orbit of a large number of planets, with the main focus on planets similar in size to the Earth
and super-Earths with a rocky surface orbiting in areas considered habitable in their solar system.
Cheops The CHaracterizing
ExOplanet Satellite (CHEOPS) will be the first mission dedicated to search for transits by
means of ultrahigh precision photometry on bright stars already known to host planets. By being able
to point at nearly any location in the sky, it will provide the unique capability of determining
accurate radii for a subset of those planets for which the mass has already been estimated from
ground-based spectroscopic surveys. It will also provide precision radii for new planets discovered
by the next generation ground-based transits surveys (Neptune-size and smaller).
SPITZER Designed to observe objects in the infrared
spectrum, Spitzer has proven to be a revolutionary tool in the characterization of exoplanets.
The mission is the first instrument to directly detect light from an exoplanet, and its data
has revealed the composition, temperature, and even likely wind patterns on faraway exoplanets
Spitzer marked a new age in planetary science by being the first telescope to directly detect light
of planets outside of our Solar System, essentially allowing them to be directly
studied and compared. The great infrared observatory also made it possible to determine
the temperatures, winds, and atmospheric compositions on these distant planets.
Prior to Spitzer, all confirmed exoplanet planets were detected indirectly,
mainly by the "wobble" technique and more recently, the "transit" technique. In the first
method, a planet is detected by the gravitational tug it exerts on its parent star, which makes the
star wobble. In the second, a planet's presence is inferred when it passes in front of its star,
causing the star to dim, or blink. Both strategies use visible-light telescopes and indirectly reveal
the mass and size of planets, respectively. Spitzer used the transit technique extensively.
"This video ends here! Thanks for watching everyone! Did you like it? What do you think
about the Kepler mission and the finding of life as we know it? Let us know in the comment below:
free your imagination! See you next time on the channel!