Hi everyone I'm Jade you're watching up
and atom and today we're talking about
NASA's latest discovery. The Trappist-1
solar system.
What is it? How was it discovered and
what makes it one of the most exciting
discoveries in the search for life beyond
Earth? 40 light-years away in the
constellation of Aquarius seven
earth-sized exoplanets have been
discovered. This is the largest amount of
earth-sized planets that have ever been found
around the single star. The star was
actually found in May 2016 and given the
name and Trappist 1 after the transiting
planet and planetesimal small
telescope in Chile. Not quite sure where
the I comes from that let's just go with
it.
The way in which the solar system was
found is actually quite fascinating. The
Trappist 1 star glows brightest in
the infrared, meaning that its wavelengths
are too long to be detected by the eye. It
was detected by an infrared telescope
called the Spitzer and monitored for 500
hours. The radiation from the trappist
one star would periodically dim and
brighten again, meaning that a planet could
be passing in front of it blocking some
of its light. By measuring these dips in
radiation, NASA scientists calculated the
size of each planet in the Trappist-1
solar system by measuring the spacing
between these dips. They were also able
to calculate how long it took each
planet to complete an orbit. The length
of these orbits then told the scientist
the distance each planet was from the
Trappist 1 star. The longer a planet took to
orbit, the further it was from the star.
The planets were calculated to be very
close together, so close in fact their
orbits interacted with one another
because of the gravitational pull. This
pulled meant that the planets orbits were
slightly less regular than what NASA
scientists had predicted they would be
based on the planets size and distance
from the star. Using this difference
between actual and predicted orbitals
they were able to calculate the mass of
the six inner planets. Because density is
just mass divided by volume or size, they
were able to estimate the density of
each planet which gave a pretty good
indication of what the planet is made up
of. The reason this is all so exciting is
because all seven planets
have been deemed suitable for supporting liquid
water. The key to life as we know it.
Three planets in particular lie in the
habitable or Goldilocks zone, with
conditions being just right for watery
oceans. Over 3,500 exoplanets have been
found and of these only a tiny fraction
of those have been deemed suitable for
life, and here we find seven all in the
same solar system! NASA scientists
speculate that the main reason water
could exist in this solar system is the
trappist 1 star itself. The star is an
ultracool dwarf, the least massive
star at a 12th (1/12) of the size of our Sun. This
means that the exoplanets orbits are
relatively short, ranging from 1.5 to 20
days. Science Mission Director, Thomas
Zurbuchen, said that if our sun were the
size of a basketball, the trappist-1
star would be the size of a golf ball.
The star is also less than half the
temperature of our sun at a brisk 2277
degrees Celsius.
This means the planets orbiting very
close to it could still sustain liquid
water and indeed they are orbiting very
close with all exoplanets closer to the
trappist 1 star than mercury is to our
sun. Because all the exoplanets are bunched
so close to their star, this also
means they are very close to each other.
So if you were standing on one of the
seven exoplanets, you'd be able to see
features of neighboring planets much
like we can see the craters of the moon
from Earth. Based on the data so far the
six inner planets are predicted to have
rocky surfaces with the seventh speculated
to be an icy snowball. Another
consequence of their close proximity is
that the exoplanets could potentially be
tidally locked to their host star. This
would mean that the same side of the
planet is always facing the star. A
perpetual day on one side and a
perpetual night on the other. You
wouldn't need to worry about getting
sunburned though because the ultra-cool
star shines 200 times dimmer than our
Sun. So more of a perpetual Twilight than
perpetual day. So what next in the search
for life in the trappist-1 solar
system? NASA scientists plan to use
transmission spectroscopy to study the
composition of the seven exo planets.
They are also currently putting up more
telescopes to study a thousand of the
nearest ultracool dwarfs and to see if there's
any exoplanets
surrounding them. Whether or not
we find life, it's a giant step toward
finding out whether we're alone in the
universe.
Thanks so much for watching! Don't forget
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you, bye!