MOFFET FIELD, USA (Reuters) – the planet closest to the Earth that has been discovered so far is found 360 light years, orbiting around a star similar to the Sun, which means a finding key in the ongoing search for life beyond our planet, according to the scientists.
The planet, named Kepler-22b, joins a list of over 500 planets orbiting stars beyond the solar system. It is the smallest and best placed to have liquid water on its surface, one of the decisive factors for life on Earth.
“We are focusing on authentic habitable planets and similar in size to Earth”, said astronomer of the University of San José Natalie Batalha, number two of the scientific equipment of the Kepler space telescope from NASA who discovered the star.
The telescope, which was opened three years ago with the name of the 17TH century German astronomer, studying about 150,000 stars in the constellations Swan and Lira in search of brightness changes caused by the passage of planets in orbit to the line of sight of Kepler.
The results extrapolarán to determine the percentage of stars in the milky way hosting potentially habitable planets and the size of the Earth.
This is the first discovery of a potentially habitable world orbiting a star similar to the Sun, said the scientists about a discovery which will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Kepler-22b is 360 million light-years away. A year is the distance that light travels in a year, about 10,000 trillion kilometers).
Checks
Planets that are at approximately the same distance from its star the land of the Sun takes a year to complete the orbit. Scientists want to see at least three passes to be able to rule out other explanations for fluctuations in the light of a star, as small stars attached. The results are also verified with other space telescopes and ground.
Kepler-22b, which has about 2.4 times the radius of the Earth, is located in the so-called “habitable zone” of the star, which would be the region in which liquid water can exist on its surface. More studies are being developed to determine whether the planet is solid, such as land or more gaseous, as Neptune.
“Do not know anything about the planets who are between the size of the Earth and Neptune, because we have no examples of this type of planets in our solar system.” Do not know what fraction will be solid, what fraction will be marine worlds, what fraction will be icy worlds. Batalha “Will not know until that we do not measure one and see,” explained at a press conference on Monday in the Center at Moffet Field NASA Ames Research, California.
Si Kepler-22b had a cushion of similar to the Earth atmosphere, and a surface would have about 22 degrees Celsius, i.e. as a spring day in the temperate zone of the Earth
Between planets 2.326 candidates found by Kepler, team 10 are similar to Earth in size and are in areas habitable their stars.
Another team of astronomers privately financed is scanning the planets objective search for radio signals produced naturally not, part of the project known as SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence, for its acronym in English)
“In that we find an example different, separate and independent living somewhere else, we will know if it is omnipresent throughout the universe”, said astronomer Jill Tarter, Director of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
The Kepler team meets this week for its first Conference scientific.
