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<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">Haven Giguere/Yale.</p><p class="caption">An artist's illustration of PH1, a planet discovered by volunteers from the Planet Hunters citizen <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> project. PH1, shown in the foreground, is a circumbinary planet and orbits two suns. </p></div><p></p></div>Think about the last time you had an unobstructed view of the night sky.</p>
<p>Many of those thousands of stars could have other planets orbiting them. The possibility that a distant exoplanet - planets outside our solar system - could support life is an alluring idea for many astrophysicists.</p>
<p>Sara Seager, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is looking for an exoplanet that could be habitable: an "<keyword id="6359982" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="earth">Earth</keyword> twin." During her talk on <keyword id="122247" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Exoplanets">exoplanets</keyword> at a conference on Sept. 28 at the <a href="http://www.ias.edu/">Institute for Advanced Study</a> in Princeton, New Jersey, Seager said spotting an exoplanet at all, let alone one that could support life, is a big challenge.</p>
<p><strong>Types of exoplanets</strong></p>
<p>Seager said "planet" is a squishy term in itself - there's no real consensus among scientists of what the size range of a planet can be (hence, what happened to Pluto) and the margin of error on estimating the size of exoplanets is very large because they are so far away.</p>
<p>There are few general types of exoplanets that have been identified so far. Some orbit very close to their stars and are extremely hot, and some are even circumbinary - they orbit two stars. Seager and her team are looking for an "Earth twin" - another small rocky planet about the same size as Earth.</p>
<p>However, exoplanet research is difficult - these planets are at the very least thousands of astronomical units away from Earth. Seager said its important to remember that most images of exoplanets are just artist's renditions. It is extremely difficult to see the real thing.</p>
<p><strong>How can you tell if an exoplanet might be habitable?</strong></p>
<p>Scientists look for planets in what is called the habitable zone - the distance a planet can be from its star without being too hot or too cold. Earth is in that sweet spot of our solar system: its not boiling hot like Mercury or freezing cold like Neptune.</p>
<p>The picture below shows the habitable zone - the light blue strip - that an Earth-like planet would probably be found in. The distance that a planet can be from its star and still be potentially habitable changes based on the size of the star.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container full"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">Sara Seager</p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p>Seager's work involves studying the planet's atmosphere. A planet needs a few basic atmospheric requirements if it can potentially support life, like the presence of water vapor and oxygen.</p>
<p><strong> How do you find an exoplanet?</strong></p>
<p>Stars are extremely bright, even from billions of miles away, so its quite a challenge to spot a planet next to a light source like that.</p>
<p>One way to identify an exoplanet is called the transiting method. When a planet passes in front of its star, the star illuminates the planet and its surrounding atmosphere. However, this method has two major shortcomings. One, big planets with puffier atmospheres are much easier to see this way. An Earth twin will likely be a small planet without a very puffy atmosphere. Two, this method only works if the planet's orbit passes directly in front of the astronomer's line of sight who is looking up at the star.</p>
<p><strong><keyword id="6360409" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="NASA">NASA</keyword> and MIT are teaming up to create a new way to identify exoplanets</strong></p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">NASA</p></div><p></p></div>NASA and the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research and the Lincoln Laboratory are developing a new device called TESS - transitting exoplanet survey satellite.</p>
<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/nasa-selects-tess-for-mission-0405.html">According to MIT</a>, this satellite will orbit Earth and take pictures of thousands of small rocky Earth-like exoplanets. TESS has a starshade that unfolds like a flower petal to block out the starlight that makes it so difficult to see exoplanets.</p>
<p>The new satellite will identify the masses, sizes, densities, and atmospheres of planets that orbiting in the habitable zone of their stars. NASA and MIT hope to have the satellite operational by 2017.</p>

Astronomer Explains Why It's So Hard To Find An 'Earth Twin' Exoplanet

<p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">JASIEK KRZYSZTOFIAK/NATURE</p><p class="caption">This artist's impression of Kepler-78b shows the view from the planet's  surface, with the disk of its host star filling much of the sky.</p></div><p></p></div></span>Researchers announced today that they have discovered a planet outside our solar system - known as an exoplanet - that is not only comparable in size to <keyword id="6359982" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="earth">Earth</keyword> but also has a mass and density similar to Earth.</p>
<p>The planet, Kepler-78b, orbits a sun-like star called Kepler-78 every 8.5 hours. </p>
<p>The findings were reported in two studies (<a href="http://press.nature.com/pdf/press_files/nature/31-10-2013/nature12767_Howard.pdf" target="_blank">one</a> and <a href="http://press.nature.com/pdf/press_files/nature/31-10-2013/nature12768_Pepe.pdf" target="_blank">two</a>) published in Nature on Wednesday.  </p>
<p>Thanks to NASA's <keyword id="914541" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Kepler-telescope">Kepler telescope</keyword>, astronomers have discovered <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-habitable-planet-2013-4">thousands of exoplanets</a> in our galaxy, many that are Earth-sized and circle stars like our sun. Although measuring the size of an exoplanet is relatively easy, determining its mass has proven more challenging. Mass is an important measurement because it's an indication of a planet's density, and therefore, what that planet is made of.</p>
<p>Kepler-78b is exciting because it is now the smallest exoplanet for which both radius and mass are known accurately, according to scientists. </p>
<p>Kepler-78b has a radius that is 20% greater than Earth's and a mass that is roughly 80% greater. By astronomical standards it is "a virtual twin of Earth," writes Drake Deming in a news article for Nature.</p>
<p>Scientists determine the size and orbit-period of <keyword id="122247" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Exoplanets">exoplanets</keyword> by measuring how much light the planet blocks as it passes in front of its host star. After measuring the brightness of Kepler-78 for four years in 30-minute intervals, researchers found that the star's brightness declined by .02% every 8.5 hours as Kepler-78b passed in front of it.</p>
<p>A planet's mass is traditionally found by measuring the velocity of its host star toward and away of from us, which is a result of a planet's gravitational tug. Light waves from a star moving toward us are shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum (they become compressed) and light waves from a star moving away from us are shifted toward the red end of the spectrum (they are stretched out). The closer a planet is to its host star, the faster the star moves, resulting in a larger color shift. Although most exoplanets produce Doppler shifts that are too small to be measured, Kepler-78b is close enough to its parent star that shifts in wavelength - and therefore both mass and density - could be determined. </p>
<p>Two independent studies found the exoplanet's density to be 5.3 and 5.57 grams per cubic centimeter. This is similar to Earth's density of 5.5 grams per cubic centimeter, meaning Kepler-78b is probably composed of iron and rock.</p>
<p>However, because Kepler-78b orbits so close to its host star it would be way too hot to support life. But being able to calculate the planet's density is a big step toward finding an Earth-twin. </p>

New Exoplanet Is A 'Virtual Twin Of Earth'

<br /><ul><li>The <keyword id="2024638" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Astronomical-Society-of-India">Astronomical Society of India</keyword> is going to give a lonely exoplanet and its star a Bengali or Sanskrit name.<br /></li><li>Finding a name for the planet is a part of the <keyword id="1198270" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="International-Astronomical-Union">International Astronomical Union</keyword>’s (IAU) Name Exoplanets campaign. <br /></li><li>Voting is currently open to the public and will close on 1 November 2019. The final results will be announced in December.<br /></li></ul>Exoplanets are planets located outside our solar system. One such lonely planet and the star it orbits is currently in the process of getting a Bengali or Sanskrit name from the Astronomical Society of India (<a href="https://astron-soc.in/outreach/activities/name-exoworlds/">ASI</a>).<br /><br />Users in India can vote for their favorite choice. The star HD86081 — which is a lot like Earth’s Sun only hotter, larger and a little older — has one Bengali name and four Sanskrit names in the running. <br />
<div type="image" title="nameofstar_edited" msid="71684170" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Sanskrit and Bengali names suggests for star HD 86081&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>
<br /><br />The Jupiter-like exoplanet that orbits the star also has one Bengali option and four Sanskrit names up for voting. The planet is similar to Jupiter because of its massive size and is composed that its composition is made up entirely of gas.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="Bengali and Sanskrit names suggested for exoplanet HD86081 b" msid="71683953" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Bengali and Sanskrit names suggested for exoplanet HD86081 b&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>
<br /><br /><br />Unlike Jupiter, <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/6691/hd-86081-b/">H86081 b</a> is the only planet circling the parent star. It’s also much closer to the star and much hotter. So hot, in fact, that iron and gold would melt on its surface.<br /><br /><br />And, since it’s closer, it only takes 2 Earth days for it to finish a complete orbit around the star. This means that one year on H86081 b is only the length of two days on Earth.<br /><br /><strong>Narrowing down the names<br /></strong><br />Students were invited by the organisation to submit their suggestions as a part of the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) campaign — <a href="https://astron-soc.in/outreach/activities/name-exoworlds/">NameExoworlds</a> — to name the astronomical objects currently classified as the star HD 86081 and the exoplanet HD86081.<br /><br />The deadline was extended for 15 August 2019 to 30 August 2019 because the names being sent in were mostly in English or Greek and the ASI was looking for an ‘Indian name’.<br /><br />From the thousands of entries that came in, five names were shortlisted for each of them. The options were opened to the public for voting on 10 October 2019. Voting will remain open till 1 November 2019, after which the final list of names will be sent to the IAU.<br /><br />The final results will be announced by the international organisation in December.<br />

India is giving Bengali, Sanskrit names to a lonely exoplanet and its star

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa">NASA</a> launched the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-planet-found-using-data-from-nasa-kepler-telescope-2019-1">Kepler</a> space telescope into orbit in 2009, which helped astronomers identify over 4,000 exoplanets - <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-telescope-tess-searches-for-alien-planets-2018-8">worlds outside our solar system</a>.</li><li>Based on that data, scientists estimate there could be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/10-billion-earth-like-planets-in-milky-way-galaxy-2019-8">up to 10 billion</a> Earth-like planets in the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-3d-map-of-milky-way-warped-shape-2019-7">Milky Way</a> galaxy. Some are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-tess-telescope-habitable-world-31-light-years-away-2019-7">in our galactic backyard</a>.</li><li>In September, scientists <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/water-vapor-on-potentially-habitable-super-earth-exoplanet-2019-9">discovered water vapor on a potentially habitable exoplanet</a>&#xa0;for the first time ever.</li><li>Here are 16 exoplanets that offer our best chance of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microbes-under-alaskan-ice-could-mirror-alien-life-2019-7">finding alien life</a> outside our solar system.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Scientists <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/water-vapor-on-potentially-habitable-super-earth-exoplanet-2019-9">detected water vapor</a> on a potentially habitable planet last month - a major step in the hunt for alien life.</p><p>The discovery was the culmination of a decade-long search that began when NASA shot the Kepler space telescope into orbit in 2009.</p><p>The telescope used what's known as the transit method to look for exoplanets (worlds outside our solar system), launching a new era of planetary discovery. Kepler watched over 530,000 stars for tiny dips in brightness that could be caused by a planet passing in front of the star - transits, in other words. Since then, astronomers have discovered over 4,000 exoplanets, and another 4,000-plus candidates are waiting to be confirmed with further observation.</p><p>This data has taught us that Earth-like worlds may not be so rare. In fact, planets between the sizes of Earth and Neptune seem to be the most common type in the galaxy.</p><p>One recent analysis of Kepler data estimated that 20% to 50% of stars have small, possibly rocky planets orbiting in their habitable zones - the range of distances from a star in which a planet's surface temperature could allow for liquid water. That means there could be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/10-billion-earth-like-planets-in-milky-way-galaxy-2019-8">up to 10 billion Earth-like planets</a> in our galaxy.</p><p>Kepler retired last year after the telescope ran out of fuel, but it has passed the planet-hunting torch to the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-tess-telescope-finds-nearby-super-earth-sub-neptunes-2019-7">Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)</a>.&#xa0;</p><p>Here are 16 of the exoplanets we know about so far that have the greatest potential for alien life. <span style="background-color: #00ffff;"></span></p>

16 recently discovered exoplanets could offer our best chance of finding alien life outside the solar system

Researchers have discovered a new "fiery, glowing red" <keyword id="20349430" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="exoplanet" source="keywords">exoplanet</keyword> displaying intense <keyword id="19916428" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="volcanic-activity" source="keywords">volcanic activity</keyword> similar to Jupiter's moon Io. Further, the many active volcanoes on the exoplanet could be making its surface hotter than some stars, they said. <br /><br />In a known star system about 66 light years away from Sun, the astrophysicists discovered signals for a new rocky planet about a third larger than Earth. The signals were captured by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which searches for exoplanets or planets outside our solar system, orbiting the brightest stars in the sky. <br /><br />The team, including researchers from the University of California Riverside, US, said that the star system, called <keyword id="21639491" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="HD-104067" source="keywords">HD 104067</keyword>, was already known to harbour a giant planet. While gathering data on the planet, Stephen Kane, a professor of Planetary Astrophysics, "unexpectedly" found another "fiery" one, taking the count of planets in the star system to three. <br /><br />"At optical wavelengths, you would be able to see a glowing, red-hot planet with a molten lava surface," Kane, lead author of the study published in The Astronomical Journal, said. <br /><br />The newly discovered rocky exoplanet, named <keyword id="21639492" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="TOI-6713-01" source="keywords">TOI-6713.01</keyword>, has a lot in common with Jupiter's rocky innermost moon, Io, and is known to be the most volcanically active body in our solar system, Kane said. <br /><br />The researchers explained that gravitational forces exerted by the other two planets in the system force this rocky planet into an elliptical or "eccentric" orbit around their star. <br /><br />The star, to which TOI-6713.01 is closer than the other planets, "squeezes" the rocky planet as it orbits and rotates because of gravity, thereby causing tides on the planet's surface in the form of volcanoes. <br /><br />Likening the scenario to "racquetball", Kane explained that the rocky inner planet gets hotter as it is constantly bounced around by the other two planets and squeezed by the star. <br /><br />"It's been forced into a situation where it's constantly exploding with volcanoes," he said. <br /><br />The extreme volcanic activity could be making the surface of TOI-6713.01 hotter than some stars, Kane said, as he calculated the surface temperature to be 2,600 degrees Kelvin or 2,330 degrees Celsius. <br /><br />The intense volcanic activity on <keyword id="21639489" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Jupiters-Io" source="keywords">Jupiter's Io</keyword> is also due to the gravity exerted by the other moons of the solar system's biggest planet, which itself has a strong gravitational pull, the researchers said. <br /><br />Io is thus "forced" into an eccentric orbit around the planet, Kane explained. <br /><br />"If the other moons weren't there, Io would be in a circular orbit around the planet and it would be quiet on the surface. Instead, Jupiter's gravity squeezes Io so much that it erupts in volcanoes constantly," Kane said. <br /><br />On Earth, tides are the effect of moon's gravity on our oceans. <br /><br />The researchers said the findings reveal a lot about the extremes in amounts of energy that can be pumped into a rocky planet, such as TOI-6713.01. <br /><br />Further, tidal effects on planets haven't historically been a focus of exoplanet research, which Kane hopes might change with this discovery. <br /><br />"While we know that stars contribute to the heat of a planet, the vast majority of the energy here is tidal and that cannot be ignored," he said.<br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/aadhar-housing-finance-ipo-allotment-how-to-check-allotment-gmp-listing-date-and-more/articleshow/110071990.cms">Aadhar Housing Finance IPO allotment – How to check allotment, GMP, listing date and more</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/sports/webstories/ipl-decoded-highest-individual-scores-in-ipl-2024-so-far-from-stoinis-to-kohli/slidelist/110008351.cms">IPL Decoded: Highest individual scores in IPL 2024 so far, from Stoinis to Kohli</a><br /><br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/indian-smartphone-market-up-8-5g-smartphones-account-for-over-70-of-shipments/articleshow/110002512.cms"><strong>Indian smartphone market up 8%, 5G smartphones account for over 70% of shipments</strong></a><br />

New "fiery" exoplanet discovered, found to display volcanic activity like Jupiter's Io

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Astronomers discovered what they believe are two alien worlds composed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/water-vapor-on-potentially-habitable-super-earth-exoplanet-2019-9">mostly of water</a>.</li><li>Telescopes have been used to discover 5,241 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-find-earth-like-planet-sun-like-star-2020-6">planets beyond our solar system</a> so far.</li></ul><p>Sitting in a star system about 218 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, two<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-hunt-for-distant-worlds-some-may-harbor-life-2022-7"> exoplanets</a> orbit a dim, red dwarf star.</p><p>In the <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01835-4">journal Nature Astronomy</a>, astronomers announced that the two exoplanets — Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 d — could be made up of mostly water.</p><p>But how did they figure that out, when the planets are far enough away that it would take a spaceship traveling 17,400 miles per hour more than 8 million years to reach them?</p><div type="image" title="graph of solar system and known exoplanets" height="2000" width="3556" msid="96944090" hostid="261" sizebytes="194948"></div><h2>Astronomers look for tiny dips in starlight to find far away worlds</h2><p>Most exoplanets are discovered through a technique called the <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/faq/31/whats-a-transit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">transit method</a>.</p><p>"That means Kepler, or another planet-hunting telescope, observed them a ton of times as they pass in front of their host star," Caroline Piaulet, a Ph.D. student at the University of Montreal's Institute for Research on Exoplanets and lead author of the study, told Insider.</p><div type="image" title="star transit method exoplanet detection nasa" height="905" width="2126" msid="96944091" hostid="261" sizebytes="19560"></div><p>Since the first worlds outside our solar system were <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/historic-timeline/#first-exoplanets-discovered" target="_blank" rel="noopener">discovered in 1992</a>, astronomers have searched for other planets orbiting sun-like stars.</p><p>Astronomers have already captured direct evidence of 5,241 planets beyond our solar system, according to<a href="https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/counts_detail.html"> NASA's Exoplanet Archive</a>.</p><p>To understand whether exoplanets, or planets around other stars, have the conditions to host life, researchers measure the chemical makeup of their atmospheres.</p><p>They do this by looking at graphs called a spectrum, which reveal how starlight filters through the atmosphere by dipping at very specific wavelengths that correspond to different molecules.</p><div type="image" title="Webb observed the spectra of WASP-96 b, revealing it's atmosphere has water, clouds, and haze." height="1292" width="1920" msid="96944092" hostid="261" sizebytes="65606"></div><p>Astronomers typically look for the ingredients that sustain earthly life — liquid water, a continuous source of energy, carbon, and other elements — when hunting for life in distant worlds.</p><h2>How they concluded Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 d have water</h2><p>Using data from the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/images-show-james-webb-space-telescope-stronger-sharper-than-hubble-2022-7">Hubble Space Telescope</a> and the retired <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasas-spitzer-space-telescope-is-retiring-after-16-years-2020-1">Spitzer Space Telescope,</a> Piaulet and her team conducted a follow-up study of Kepler-138 d's atmosphere.</p><p>But the new observations suggested the presence of another world orbiting the host star every 38 days: Kepler-138 e.</p><p>Taking into account the newly found exoplanet, researchers compared the sizes and masses of the planets in the star system and determined Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 d were roughly the same mass and size — about 20% larger than Earth.</p><p>The team also concluded that up to half of their volumes are likely made of materials lighter than rock.</p><div type="image" title="Illustration Earth and exoplanet Kepler-138 d" height="1076" width="1821" msid="96944093" hostid="261" sizebytes="114384"></div><p>"We were surprised that they were not consistent with being rocky in composition," Piaulet said. "They had to have some lighter elements in there. Water is a good explanation because it's the most abundant of these elements."</p><p>"We often think of the Earth as the blue planet, covered in oceans," she added. "These worlds would have much more water than Earth."</p><p>On Earth, the average depth of the oceans is 2.3 miles, according to the <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceandepth.html#:~:text=The%20average%20ocean%20depth%20is%203.7%20kilometers%20(2.3%20miles).&amp;text=The%20average%20depth%20of%20the,3%2C688%20meters%20(12%2C100%20feet).">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</a>. For Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 d, the water atmosphere would be 1,243 miles deep, Piaulet added.</p><h2>Water worlds beyond our solar system could be abundant in the universe</h2><p>Worlds rich in liquid water might not be as rare as astronomers previously thought, Piaulet said.</p><p>In August 2022, <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac7cea">another team of researchers</a> found planet TOI-1452 b that could potentially be covered in a deep ocean. Follow-up observations with the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-team-unveils-nasa-space-telescope-first-images-2022-7">James Webb Space Telescope</a> will be needed to confirm the ocean's presence.</p><div type="image" title="Ocean worlds beyond Earth have been a key research focus for NASA's Planetary Science Division ever since the confirmation of ice-covered liquid water oceans on Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede and, subsequently, Saturn's moons Enceladus and Titan." height="824" width="1440" msid="96944094" hostid="261" sizebytes="229048"></div><p>But astronomers don't have to venture into the far-off reaches of the cosmos in search of ocean worlds.</p><p>There are some of them right in our own solar neighborhood, such as Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, which <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/water-space-volume-planets-moons-2016-10">have subsurface oceans</a> beneath an ice layer.</p><p>Now that researchers have begun to find a bevy of water-rich worlds, "we don't know much about what type of life could be there," Piaulet said.</p><div type="image" title="NASA's Cassini spacecraft flying through Enceladus" height="675" width="1600" msid="96944095" hostid="261" sizebytes="15544"></div><p>One limitation in scouring the cosmos for alien life is that scientists' definition of what a life-supporting planet might look like is based on what we know about life on Earth.</p><p>But by discovering and studying new worlds, astronomers can hone in on what makes a world habitable beyond a sample size of one — Earth.</p>

How exoplanet hunters find alien worlds hundreds of light-years away and figure out if they have water

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Astronomers have discovered thousands of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/exoplanets">exoplanets</a>, or worlds beyond the solar system.</li><li>In June, researchers announced they'd logged the 4,000th such planet into a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa">NASA</a>&#xa0;catalog. The first was found in 1992.</li><li>Two artists have illustrated all of those discoveries in 60 seconds using an incredible animated <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/maps">map</a> and timeline of the data.&#xa0;</li><li>Some of the exoplanets <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-telescope-tess-searches-for-alien-planets-2018-8">might be habitable to alien life</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Earth is not alone, and a stunning new <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiFD_LBx2nM">animation</a> created using NASA data beautifully illustrates that point.</p><p>There may be <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/30296/how-many-planets-are-in-the-galaxy/">trillions</a> of other planets in our galaxy, the Milky Way (which itself is one of hundreds of billions of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hubble-telescope-galaxies-photo-legacy-wide-field-deep-universe-2019-5">other galaxies</a> in the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/entire-universe-picture-logarithmic-map-2017-6">universe</a>). But finding such extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, is not easy - even when they're relatively close by.</p><p>In fact, it takes more than four years for <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-fast-speed-light-travels-earth-moon-mars-nasa-2019-1">light to travel</a> from the nearest star to our solar system. Meanwhile, exoplanets are both small and dim, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-milky-way-galaxy-looks-like-2016-9">the Milky Way</a> is a 100,000 light-year-wide haystack for astronomers to scour.</p><p>Despite their long odds, however, astronomers have logged thousands of exoplanets since a team confirmed the existence of the first one <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/doi/10.1086/186167">in October 1991</a>. This June, in fact, marked a milestone: researchers logged the 4,000th discovery in an ever-growing NASA <a href="https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/TblView/nph-tblView?app=ExoTbls&amp;config=planets">archive of exoplanets</a>.</p><p>To celebrate the achievement, two artists pulled all of that data and compiled it into a short animated map and timeline called "4000 Exoplanets," shown below.</p><p>The animation was created by artist <a href="https://www.astromattrusso.com/">Matt Russo</a> and scored by musician <a href="http://www.system-sounds.com/about-2/">Andrew Santaguida</a>, who both work with a science-art outreach project called System Sound. The short film was published to YouTube on Sunday and <a href="https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190710.html">described</a> on Wednesday by NASA's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomy-picture-of-the-day-apod-20th-anniversary-2015-6">Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) site</a>.</p><h2>What the animated exoplanet timeline shows</h2><p>The video shows a flattened map of the 360-degree night sky as seen from Earth. The bright band of stars in the center is a cross-cut view of the Milky Way; it looks this way because our solar system drifts within the spiral galaxy.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Each circle that appears represents a confirmed exoplanet discovery. The main method used to find each world is shown as one of seven colors.</p><p>For example, purple circles show a planet found by its transit, or passage in front of a parent star; this is detectable because it causes periodic, subtle drops in the parent star's brightness level relative to Earth. Pink, meanwhile, shows distant worlds that were located because their gravitational pull was strong enough to make their star "wiggle" sufficiently for astronomers to detect.</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jupiter-orbits-center-mass-near-sun-2017-7">Jupiter is so big it does not actually orbit the sun</a></em></p><p>The pace of discoveries in the 60-second timeline starts off slowly, with only about 70 extrasolar worlds located in the first decade of discoveries. That's because finding and confirming the existence of exoplanets was extraordinarily difficult without advanced tools and resources.</p><p>But as funding grows, techniques improve, more ground telescopes help with the search, and new space observatories launch into space, the rate at which exoplanets have been found has increased. The pace of discovery really exploded after 2009, when NASA launched its Kepler Space Telescope.</p><p>Kepler focused its search on a small patch of the sky and used the transit method of exoplanet detection on 150,000 stars. This is why, in the animation, a big purple blob suddenly begins to appear around 2010 (at top-left) and the exoplanet count skyrockets.</p><p>NASA <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/r-nasa-retires-its-planet-hunter-the-kepler-space-telescope-2018-10">deactivated Kepler in late 2018</a>, but in April 2018, NASA <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-launch-nasa-exoplanet-telescope-youtube-webcast-2018-4">launched</a> a similar planet hunter called the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-launch-nasa-exoplanet-telescope-youtube-webcast-2018-4">Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)</a>.</p><p>TESS is expected to scan 200,000 nearby stars across 85% of the night sky, revealing thousands of additional planets. Below is an animation of TESS' planned survey.</p><p>Around <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-launch-tess-nasa-planet-hunting-telescope-2018-4">50 of the planets TESS detects should be Earth-size and potentially habitable</a>, creating promising targets for more detailed observations by telescopes that can image objects much deeper in space.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cold-super-earth-planet-barnards-star-2018-11">first pictures of Earth-like worlds</a> may come from enormous ground-based observatories, including the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/giant-magellan-telescope-gmt-construction-2024-completion-2018-8">Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile</a>, which are poised to come online starting in the mid-2020s. Astronomers hope such telescopes can take raw exoplanet discoveries a step further by picking up light from their atmospheres - and potentially "sniffing" out biosignatures that may indicate the presence of alien life.</p><div></div><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(56.25% + 44px)"></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-planets-would-look-like-closer-to-earth-animation-yeti-dynamics-2017-11">What planets would look like if they were closer to Earth</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

An incredible new 60-second animation shows where 4,000 planets beyond our solar system are located in deep space

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Astronomers have <a href="https://www.mpg.de/14901977/exoplanet-sunlike-host-star">discovered</a> a potentially <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/water-vapor-on-potentially-habitable-super-earth-exoplanet-2019-9">habitable exoplanet</a> and its <keyword id="6355599" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="star">star</keyword> that are strikingly similar to the Earth and the <keyword id="24879" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Sun">sun</keyword>.</li><li>The planet is less than double the size of Earth. The star it orbits is about the size of the sun and emits visible light.</li><li>The system is about 3,000 light-years away from our solar system. Future <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword> telescopes could someday study it in more detail.</li></ul><p>Scientists have found a potentially habitable exoplanet and its star that are more similar to the Earth and our sun than any other known planet-star pair.</p><p>The planet — which is still considered a planet candidate until further confirmation — is the right distance from its star to allow for the presence of liquid surface water. That means it could potentially <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-reveals-new-exoplanet-liquid-water-host-life-2020-1">host life</a>. The Earth-like world is about 1.9 times the size of our planet.</p><p>"It's the combination of this less-than-double the size of the Earth planet and its solar type host star that make it so special and familiar," Dr. René Heller, the lead author of the new study, said in a <a href="https://www.mpg.de/14901977/exoplanet-sunlike-host-star">press </a><a href="https://www.mpg.de/14901977/exoplanet-sunlike-host-star">release</a>. Her team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research described the planet and star in a paper <a href="https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2020/06/aa36929-19.pdf">published</a> last week in the journal Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics.</p><p>For now, the <a href="https://www.mpg.de/14901977/exoplanet-sunlike-host-star">planet candidate is known as KOI-456.04</a>. If its existence is <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1524/how-do-you-find-and-confirm-a-planet-10-things-about-the-search-for-exoplanets/">confirmed</a> by other telescopes, the exoplanet would join a group of about 4,000 known planets outside our solar system.</p><p>Other research had previously found that the star this Earth-like planet candidate orbits, called Kepler-160, has two planets circling it. But the new study revealed two additional ones. </p><p><div type="image" title="earth like exoplanets" height="1080" width="1920" msid="76290902" hostid="261"></div></p><h2><strong>What makes an exoplanet habitable</strong></h2><p>To be considered habitable, planets must orbit a stable star at a distance that maintains a temperature suitable for liquid water.</p><p>The Milky Way galaxy could <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/10-billion-earth-like-planets-in-milky-way-galaxy-2019-8">hold up to 10 billion</a> Earth-like planets, some estimates suggest, but only about 4,000 have been identified.</p><p>The vast majority of <keyword id="122247" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Exoplanets">exoplanets</keyword> don't meet the conditions required for life to exist. Most of the potentially habitable worlds researchers have found orbit red dwarf stars, which aren't stable enough. Red dwarf stars are smaller and fainter than the sun, and emit infrared radiation. They also sometimes send out high-energy flares that can fry the planets around them.</p><p>Of the known exoplanets that do orbit a sun-like star, most are much bigger than Earth — usually about the size of Neptune (four times Earth's size). These larger planets tend to trap too much hydrogen in their atmospheres, and such <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-juno-probe-at-jupiter-new-photos-2018-7">gas giants</a> don't sustain liquid water.</p><h2>This new planet candidate is promising</h2><p><div type="image" title="gas giant exoplanet star solar system 15 kepler36 nasa" height="852" width="1136" msid="76290904" hostid="261"></div></p><p>The new finding came after astronomers reexamined archived data from the Kepler Space Telescope, which NASA retired in October 2018. The telescope passed the exoplanet-hunting torch to to the TESS satellite telescope, which <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-telescope-tess-searches-for-alien-planets-2018-8">began its observations</a> in August 2018.  </p><p>Because KOI-456.04 is less than double the size of Earth, that could mean its atmospheric conditions are similar to ours. Plus, the star the planet candidate orbits is about 1.1 times the size of the sun, with a surface temperature of 5,200 degrees Celsius (only 300 degrees less than the sun). The star also emits visible light, like our sun does.</p><p>If KOI-456.04's atmosphere is like Earth's — meaning it has a mild greenhouse effect — then its average surface temperature would be about 5 degrees Celsius, compared to Earth's average of 15 degrees Celsius, according to the Max Planck Institute. </p><p><div type="image" title="An illustration shows two exoplanets orbiting the young star PDS 70 J." height="1125" width="1500" msid="76290906" hostid="261"></div></p><p>The system is just over 3,000 light-years away from our solar system.</p><p>Future space telescopes could study the planet candidate further. NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency plan to launch the James Webb space telescope in 2021, while the European Space Agency's <a href="https://sci.esa.int/web/plato">PLATO</a> space telescope, scheduled to launch in 2026, will focus on finding Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars.</p>

Astronomers have discovered a star and potentially habitable planet that are strikingly similar to the sun and Earth

<ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>Astronomers have discovered a new Earth-sized planet outside our solar system</strong>, named TOI 700 d, 100 light-years away.</li><li>The planet is in <strong>its star's habitable zone</strong> and has the potential to hold liquid water.</li><li><strong>F</strong><strong>uture research could give scientists more information about the planet's surface and atmosphere. </strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>. </strong></li></ul><p>NASA astronomers have found yet another planet outside our solar system that has the potential to host alien life.</p><p>On Monday, a team of researchers announced that the agency's planet-hunting telescope, the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/tess-transiting-exoplanet-survey-satellite">Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)</a>, has discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet that has the potential to hold liquid water.</p><p>The planet, called TOI 700 d, is about 100 light-years away, and it orbits a red dwarf star with about 40% the mass of our sun.</p><p>TOI 700 d sits in its star's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/goldilocks-exoplanet-habitability-internal-heat-2016-8">Goldilocks-like habitable zone</a> - the area around a star where it's not too hot and not too cold for water on orbiting planets to remain in a liquid state. This particular exoplanet (the term for planets <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/extrasolar-planet-nasa-discoveries-data-animated-map-2019-7">outside our solar system</a>) is about 20% bigger than Earth, and it receives about 86% as much light energy as Earth gets from the sun. It's one of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/astrobiology/goldilocks-worlds/">only five Earth-sized planets</a> researchers have ever found in a star's habitable zone.</p><p>It's also the first Earth-sized planet TESS has ever found within its star's habitable zone. (The space telescope became operational in 2018.)</p><p>Exoplanets  that orbit red dwarfs like TOI 700 aren't always the best places to look for life, since such stars are prone to powerful flares. Those can fry a planet's atmosphere, making the chance of alien life there very slim. </p><p>But in the case of TOI 700, the conditions seem just right. </p><p>"In 11 months of data, we saw no flares from the star, which improves the chances TOI 700 d is habitable and makes it easier to model its atmospheric and surface conditions," Emily Gilbert, who leads the team that found the exoplanet, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-planet-hunter-finds-its-1st-earth-size-habitable-zone-world">said in a NASA press release</a>.</p><h2>Three planets, one star</h2><p>TESS hunts for planets using what's known as the transit method: The telescope measures light from thousands of stars, then notes when a particular star's light dims, since that's a sign that a planet has passed in front of it.</p><p>This discovery, announced at the <a href="https://aas.org/meetings/aas235">annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society</a>, showed that two other planets orbit the same star as TOI 700 d.</p><p>The innermost one of the trio is a rocky world that's also close to the size of Earth, but it's far too close to its star to be habitable. The middle planet is likely a miniature version of Neptune - a gaseous world 2.6 times as big as Earth - but it's not in the habitable zone, either.</p><p>All three planets are tidally locked, meaning the same side of the planet faces the star at all times, leaving the other half in perpetual darkness.</p><p>In order to be sure of their finding , a second telescope - <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/main/index.html">NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope</a> - also observed the star system to confirm TESS's findings. </p><h2>Modeling TOI 700 d's atmosphere</h2><p>The fact that TOI 700 d is the same size as our planet doesn't mean that conditions on its surface mirror Earth's.</p><p>Until astronomers can figure out how much mass TOI 700 d has, they can't be sure if the planet is a rocky world like ours or gaseous one like one of its sisters.</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/upcoming-telescopes-will-transform-our-understanding-of-the-universe-2019-11">Upcoming, advanced telescopes</a>, however, could enable scientists to make those measurements. NASA's James A. Webb telescope, which is slated to come online in 2021, could collect the data astronomers need to get a clear picture of what TOI 700 d's surface is like. Plus, because TOI 700 is a bright star relatively close to Earth, ground-based telescopes could also look to see how much its starlight pierces the three exoplanets' atmospheres.</p><p>For now, though, a second research team offered several models of what the TOI 700 d planet's environment might look like, based on its size and the type of star it orbits.</p><p>One of those models suggested the exoplanet could be covered in a vast ocean, with a carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere similar to what scientists suspect surrounded Mars when it was young. Another model proposed TOI 700 d could be a cloudless version of our modern Earth that's all land with no sea.</p><p>"It's exciting because no matter what we find out about the planet, it's going to look completely different from what we have here on Earth," Gabrielle Engelmann-Suissa, a research assistant at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a press release.</p><h2>Other exoplanets are even more promising</h2><p>TOI 700 d is not the only planet in the universe that researchers think could be habitable for alien life. In fact, it's far from the front-runner.</p><p>In September 2019, scientists announced that they'd <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/water-vapor-on-potentially-habitable-super-earth-exoplanet-2019-9">detected water vapor</a> on a potentially habitable planet for the first time. The planet, called K2-18b, is a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-tess-telescope-finds-nearby-super-earth-sub-neptunes-2019-7">super-Earth</a> that orbits a red dwarf star 110 light-years away.</p><p>K2-18b is the only known exoplanet with water vapor, an atmosphere, and a temperature range that could support liquid water on its surface. That makes it our "best candidate for habitability," one researcher said.</p><p>In 2016, astronomers also discovered <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-find-3-earth-sized-planets-2016-5">three Earth-size planets</a> similar to TOI 700 d orbiting a dim red dwarf star about 39 light-years away. A year later, they discovered that seven planets actually pass through the habitable zone of that star, named TRAPPIST-1. Three or four of those planets may have conditions conducive to extraterrestrial life.</p><p>"We've made a giant, accelerated leap forward in the search for habitable worlds," Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at MIT who wasn't involved in the research, said of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets in February 2017. "In this system, it's like Goldilocks has many sisters."</p>

NASA's planet-hunting telescope found an Earth-size exoplanet 100 light-years away. It could hide a vast ocean.

<p>If extraterrestrial life is anything like what we see on Earth, then chances are it's living on Earth-like planets thousands, or even millions, of light years from our solar system.</p><p>Today, astronomers have detected <a href="http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/">over 1,700 extra-solar planets</a>, or exoplanets, with <a href="http://kepler.nasa.gov/">NASA's Kepler Space Telescope</a>. While it's hard to visualize so many planets, a second-year astronomy graduate student at the University of Washington, named <a href="http://www.astro.washington.edu/users/eakruse/">Ethan Kruse</a>, has found a way that is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DnDeBa0KFc">both mesmerizing and oddly humbling</a>.</p><p>Check out his animation below, where every circle you see is a planet. (Our solar system is on the far right.)</p><p><div></div></p><p>What you're seeing here is our solar system among every exoplanet that the Kepler telescope has identified since NASA launched it into space in 2009. In order to make each planet visible, the sizes are not to scale.</p><p>In total, the animation reveals a jaw-dropping 1,705 exoplanets in 685 planetary systems - just like our solar system, many other planetary systems contain more than one planet.</p><p>The size of each planet's orbit is to scale, so if you compare the speed of most exoplanets to the planets in our solar system, you can see that many are moving much faster, which means they're significantly closer to their parent star.</p><p>Moreover, on the left, Kruse provides a color gauge that corresponds to the different temperatures of each planet, measured in Kelvin. (The locations of exoplanets in the animation don't necessarily correlate with their true location within the Milky Way galaxy.)</p><p>Many exoplanets observed to date are larger than Earth and scorching hot. Experts call these "<a href="http://www.universetoday.com/109269/what-are-hot-jupiters/">hot Jupiters</a>," (illustrated below) which can have surface temperatures that reach 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>While that's far too hot for any life, that we know of, to survive, there are some exoplanets similar in size and temperature to Earth. And it's these distant celestial orbs that give some astrobiologists hope.</p><p>Some scientists even think that by studying the atmospheres of these Earth-like exoplanets, we could discover the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-will-humans-find-aliens-on-exoplanets-2015-5">first signs of extraterrestrial life</a>.</p><p>We first learned about Kruse's incredible animation on the wildly popular website: <a href="http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap151205.html">Astronomy Picture of the Day</a>.</p><p>You can make your own animation using the source code that Kruse provides <a href="https://github.com/ethankruse/kepler_orrery">here</a>. You can also check out a similar animation that Kruse made in 2013 on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnZVvYm6KKM">YouTube</a> or below:</p><p><div></div></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/animated-timeline-earth-history-2015-11">This 3-minute animation will change your perception of time</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="xrY3l3eDplY8eJOQK4NibII2lNSWACxD" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

This 1-minute animation will change your perception of life in the universe

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-detects-water-on-distant-planet-2022-7">The James Webb Space Telescope detected</a> clear evidence of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet's atmosphere.</li><li>The planet, WASP-39 b, is a hot gas giant orbiting a sun-like star about 700 light-years from Earth.</li></ul><p>Astronomers using <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/images-show-james-webb-space-telescope-stronger-sharper-than-hubble-2022-7">NASA's James Webb Space Telescope</a> have conclusively detected evidence of carbon dioxide in a world beyond our solar system.</p><p>The planet, called WASP-39 b, is a gas giant orbiting a sun-like star about 700 light-years away, where temperatures are consistently about 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, or 900 degrees Celsius. While the planet was first discovered in 2011, Webb's sensitive infrared instruments allowed researchers to analyze it in detail, definitely detecting carbon dioxide there for the first time. </p><p>To better understand exoplanets, or planets around other stars, researchers train their telescopes to measure the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-detects-water-on-distant-planet-2022-7">chemical makeup</a> of the exoplanet's atmospheres. They do this by looking at how starlight gets filtered by the atmosphere, which dips at very specific wavelengths that correspond to different molecules. </p><p>Using Webb's NIRSpec instrument, astronomers looked at the gases and chemicals present in WASP-39 b's atmosphere on July 10.</p><p>"As soon as the data appeared on my screen, the whopping carbon dioxide feature grabbed me," said Zafar Rustamkulov, a planetary scientist and member of the transiting exoplanet team, in a <a href="https://esawebb.org/news/weic2213/?lang">press release</a>. "It was a special moment, crossing an important threshold in exoplanet sciences."</p><div type="image" title="The 'whopping carbon dioxide feature' detected by Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph as the world transited its host star." height="604" width="985" msid="93786428" hostid="261" sizebytes="23910"></div><p>"Detecting such a clear signal of carbon dioxide on WASP-39 b bodes well for the detection of atmospheres on smaller, terrestrial-sized planets," Natalie Batalha, an astronomer who leads the transiting exoplanet team, said in a <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-webb-detects-carbon-dioxide-in-exoplanet-atmosphere">press release</a>.</p><p>While carbon dioxide is associated with life on Earth, astronomers typically look for the ingredients that sustain life — liquid water, a continuous source of energy, carbon, and other elements — when <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-hunt-for-distant-worlds-some-may-harbor-life-2022-7">hunting for life in distant worlds</a>.</p><p>When NASA revealed the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-team-unveils-nasa-space-telescope-first-images-2022-7">first batch of Webb images</a> on July 12, the agency included data showing the existence of water, along with evidence of clouds and haze, in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-detects-water-on-distant-planet-2022-7">WASP-96 b</a>, which orbits a sun-like star.</p><p>More discoveries are almost inevitable as Webb's capabilities allow for unprecedented views into the atmospheres of distant planets.</p><p>"With the James Webb Space Telescope, we can explore the chemical makeup of the atmosphere of other worlds — and if there are signs in it that we can only explain by life," Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy at Cornell University and director of the Carl Sagan Institute, previously told Insider.</p><p>"It is an amazing time in our exploration of the cosmos," Kaltenegger said, adding, "Are we alone? This amazing space telescope is the first-ever tool that collects enough light for us to start figuring this fundamental question out."</p>

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