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Researchers have identified two dozen planets outside our solar system that may have conditions more suitable for life than our own and some of these orbit stars that may be better than even our Sun.<br /><br />A study, led by Washington State University scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch and published in the journal Astrobiology, detailed characteristics of potential "superhabitable" planets, that include those that are older, a little larger, slightly warmer and possibly wetter than Earth. <br /><br />Life could also more easily thrive on planets that circle more slowly changing stars with longer lifespans than our sun.<br /><br />The 24 top contenders for superhabitable planets are all more than 100 light years away.<br /><br />However, Schulze-Makuch said the research could help focus future observation efforts, such as from NASA's James Web Space Telescope, the LUVIOR space observatory and the European Space Agency's PLATO space telescope.<br /><br />"With the next space telescopes coming up, we will get more information, so it is important to select some targets," said Schulze-Makuch, a professor with WSU and the Technical University in Berlin. <br /><br />"We have to focus on certain planets that have the most promising conditions for complex life. However, we have to be careful to not get stuck looking for a second Earth because there could be planets that might be more suitable for life than ours".<br /><br />There are at least 4,500 known exoplanets beyond our solar system. <br /><br />Habitability, however, does not mean these planets definitely have life, merely the conditions that would be conducive to life.<br /><br />Earth is around 4.5 billion years old but the researchers argued that the sweet spot for life is a planet that is between 5 billion to 8 billion years old.<br /><br />Size and mass also matter. <br /><br />A planet that is 10 per cent larger than the Earth should have more habitable land. <br /><br />"One that is about 1.5 times Earth's mass would be expected to retain its interior heating through radioactive decay longer and would also have a stronger gravity to retain an atmosphere over a longer time period," the researchers noted.<br /><br />Water is key to life and the authors argue that a little more of it would help, especially in the form of moisture, clouds and humidity. <br /><br />A slightly overall warmer temperature, a mean surface temperature of about 5 degrees Celsius (or about 8 degrees Fahrenheit) greater than Earth, together with the additional moisture, would be also better for life. <br /><br />Among the 24 top planet candidates, none of them meet all the criteria for superhabitable planets, but one has four of the critical characteristics, making it possibly much more comfortable for life than our home planet.<br /><br />"We have a great number of complex and diverse lifeforms, and many that can survive in extreme environments. It is good to have an adaptable life, but that doesn't mean that we have the best of everything," the authors wrote.<br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/banks/news/supreme-court-defers-loan-moratorium-case-hearing-to-october-13-gives-rbi-and-the-government-another-week-to-file-additional-affidavits/articleshow/78487586.cms">Supreme Court defers loan moratorium case hearing to October 13 — gives RBI and the government another week to file additional affidavits</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/tcs-shares-hit-record-high-board-to-mull-over-share-buyback-and-earnings-on-october-7/articleshow/78486980.cms">TCS rallies nearly 5%, shares hit fresh high — board to mull over share buyback and earnings on October 7</a><br /><br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/banks/news/indusind-icici-rbl-axis-hdfc-kotak-mahindra-bank-share-price-and-other-stocks-surge-on-loan-moratorium-case/articleshow/78486360.cms"><strong>Relief rally in bank stocks continues as Supreme Court defers loan moratorium hearing to October 13</strong></a><br />

Two dozen superhabitable planets identified —  some older, a little larger, slightly warmer and possibly wetter than Earth

<p>Some scientists believe we're most likely to find life outside of Earth if we look beyond our solar system. Life, they think, could be present on some Earth-like planet orbiting a different sun thousands of light years away.</p><p>These earth-like planets do exist. Called exoplanets, they were discovered 20 years ago. But scientists haven't found a planet that's similar in size to Earth, orbiting a star similar to our sun, and traveling in a habitable zone (which means the planet is at the right temperature to harbor liquid water).</p><p>That is, until now.</p><p>Kepler 452b will forever be remembered as the first, second Earth or what NASA refers to as "Earth 2.0" ever discovered:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723">NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle</a></span></p><p class="caption">Illustration of Kepler 452b.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Here's what we know so far about this Earth 2.0:</p><ul><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It's 60% larger than Earth.</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It's most likely rocky, meaning it has a solid surface as opposed to a gaseous one, like Jupiter.</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It's about 1,400 light years from Earth.</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It orbits its star every 385 days, very similar to Earth's orbital length.</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The planet and star it's orbiting are about 6 billion years old - 1.5 billion years older than our sun.</span></li></ul><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Although NASA does not know if there is life on Kepler 452b, </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Jon Jenkins, the Kepler data analysis lead at NASA's Ames Research Center, said during the announcement:</span></p><p><strong>"It's simply awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star, which is long than the age of the Earth," Jenkins said. "That's considerable time and opportunity for life to arise somewhere on the surface ... should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life on this planet [exist]."</strong></p><p>Using NASA's planet-hunting space telescope, called Kepler, a team announced today that Kepler 452b is the most Earth-like planet every discovered in history. </p><p><span>"This is about the closest, so far," said </span><span>John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> Mission Directorate in Washington, during the announcement, who added that this is just the beginning of exciting Earth-like planetary discoveries from Kepler. </span></p><p>Scientists have discovered planets similar in size to Earth in the past, but never one that was orbiting around a star similar to our own. The more like Earth an exoplanet is, suggests that the more likely it could have the right conditions for life. </p><p><span>In addition to the discovery of Kepler-452b, the scientists announced 11 more newly-found Earth-sized planets. Here they are in a diagram. Kepler-452b is the only one orbiting a G star, which is the same type as our sun:</span></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-CalTech/R. Hurt</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p class="p1">Jenkins reported that right now is receiving about 10% more energy than Earth currently does. </p><p class="p1">In another 1.5 billion years Earth will receive 10% more sun than it does now, which means that Kepler 452b is a future look at what Earth could look like 1.5 billion years from now.</p><p class="p1">Jeff Coughlin, the Kepler research scientist at SETI Institute, cautioned that 11 of these new planets are only candidates the moment. They need to be confirmed by other observations from other telescopes before scientists can confirm that these are, in fact, exoplanets.</p><p class="p1">"There are some scenarios that can trick us," Coughlin said. "We need ground-based observations to really confirm that these are actual planets."</p><p class="p1">But 1 planet has been confirmed: Kepler 452b. </p><p class="p1">This new discovery suggests that our home planet isn't alone in the Milky Way galaxy:</p><p class="p1">"We can say that near earth-sized planets in the habitable zone around G stars are common throughout our galaxy," Jenkins said.</p><p class="p1"> </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-looks-like-if-earths-ice-melted-animated-map-2015-4">Animated map shows what the US would look like if all the Earth's ice melted</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Z4dGwzdDrnZunZUB10-CqEUToYnAvsHw" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

NASA just discovered an Earth-like planet

Washington, An international team of <keyword id="49623" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Astronomers">astronomers</keyword> has discovered a trio of hot worlds larger than <keyword id="6359982" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="earth">Earth</keyword> orbiting a much younger version of our <keyword id="24879" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sun">Sun</keyword> called TOI 451.<br /><br />The system resides in the recently discovered Pisces-Eridanus stream, a collection of stars less than 3 per cent the age of our solar system that stretches across one-third of the sky.<br /><br />The researchers believe that the newly discovered planetary system, detailed in The Astronomical Journal, will provide researchers with the rare chance to study a group of growing <keyword id="6448742" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Planets">planets</keyword>.<br /><br />The planets were discovered in images taken by <keyword id="6360409" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword>'s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) between October and December 2018.<br /><br />Follow-up studies of TOI 451 and its planets included observations made in 2019 and 2020 using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has since been retired, as well as many ground-based facilities.<br /><br />Archival infrared data from NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite suggests the system retains a cool disk of dust and rocky debris.<br /><br />Other observations show that TOI 451 likely has two distant stellar companions circling each other far beyond the planets.<br /><br />"This system checks a lot of boxes for astronomers," said lead researcher Elisabeth Newton, Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, <keyword id="822202" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="New-Hampshire">New Hampshire</keyword>, US.<br /><br />"It's only 120 million years old and just 400 light-years away, allowing detailed observations of this young planetary system. And because there are three planets between two and four times Earth's size, they make especially promising targets for testing theories about how planetary atmospheres evolve."<br /><br />The young star TOI 451, better known to astronomers as CD-38 1467, lies about 400 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.<br /><br />It has 95 per cent of our Sun's mass, but it is 12 per cent smaller, slightly cooler, and emits 35 per cent less energy.<br /><br />TOI 451 rotates every 5.1 days, which is more than five times faster than the Sun.<br /><br />Even TOI 451's most distant planet orbits three times closer than Mercury ever approaches to the Sun, so all of these worlds are quite hot and inhospitable to life as we know it. Temperature estimates range from about 1,200 degrees Celsius for the innermost planet to about 450 degrees C for the outermost one.<br /><br />TOI 451b orbits every 1.9 days, is about 1.9 times Earth's size, and its estimated mass ranges from two to 12 times Earth's.<br /><br />The next planet out, TOI 451 c, completes an orbit every 9.2 days, is about three times larger than Earth, and holds between three and 16 times Earth's mass. The farthest and largest world, TOI 451 d, circles the star every 16 days, is four times the size of our planet, and weighs between four and 19 Earth masses.<br /><br />Astronomers expect planets as big as these to retain much of their atmospheres despite the intense heat from their nearby star.<br /><br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/comparison-between-realme-x7-pro-5g-and-xiaomi-mi-10i-mobile-phones-with-price-and-specifications/articleshow/80873224.cms">Realme X7 Pro 5G vs Xiaomi Mi 10i – best mid-range device under ₹30,000 in India</a><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/defense/news/experts-say-india-and-china-both-need-to-show-their-voters-that-they-won-in-ladakh-for-the-disengagement-to-be-successful/articleshow/80876036.cms">Experts say India and China both need to show their voters that they won in Ladakh⁠ for the disengagement to be successful</a><br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/why-grofers-may-allow-an-american-blank-cheque-firm-to-buy-it-out-instead-of-fighting-ambani-and-bigbasket-for-ipo/articleshow/80874979.cms"><strong>Here’s why Grofers may allow an American “blank cheque” firm to buy it out instead of fighting Ambani and BigBasket for IPO</strong></a><br />

Astronomers discover three planets orbiting younger Sun-like star

<p>This, we think, is what it looked like when our own planet formed around our sun.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>ESO/ALMA</span></p><p class="caption">The star TW Hydrae, about 175 light-years away from us.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Pictured is the young sun-like star TW Hydrae, which is a favorite for astronomers both because it's close - about 175 light years away - and because it's a young, <a href="http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1611/">"infant" star</a> at only about 10 million years old.</p><p>The star is young enough that the space debris around it has not yet fully coalesced into a planetary solar system like our own. Instead, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) <a href="http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1611/">says</a> it's surrounded by what's known as a "protoplanetary disc," full of dust and gas that could come together.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>ESO/ALMA</span></p><p class="caption">The inset image (upper right) zooms in on the gap nearest to the star, which is at the same distance as the Earth is from the Sun, suggesting an infant version of our home planet could be emerging from the dust and gas.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>This new image, taken from the high-altitude Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) facility in Chile, shows that three rings - gaps in the disc - have formed around TW Hydrae. This indicates that planets are likely forming, sweeping their orbits clear of that space dust and gas.</p><p>The closest of these rings is approximately the same as the distance between our Earth and our own sun, as seen in the image below. Its similarity to our home suggests this growing planet could perhaps be like Earth one day.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA); B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)</span></p><p class="caption">This ALMA image of the young nearby star TW Hydrae has a resolution of 1 AU (Astronomical Unit, the distance from the Earth to the Sun in the Solar System). It reveals a gap in the disc at 1 AU, suggesting that a planet with a similar orbit to Earth is forming there.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The two further rings in the top image are at about the distances of Saturn and Pluto from our sun, indicating that planets are likely forming in those same spaces as well.</p><p>"Previous studies with optical and radio telescopes confirm that TW Hydrae hosts a prominent disc with features that strongly suggest planets are beginning to coalesce," Sean Andrews, lead author of the study in the <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8205/820/2/L40">Astrophysical Journal Letters</a> where this research was published, said <a href="http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1611/">in a press release</a>.</p><p>"The new ALMA images show the disc in unprecedented detail, revealing a series of concentric dusty bright rings and dark gaps, including intriguing features that may indicate that a planet with an Earth-like orbit is forming there," Andrews said. "This is the highest spatial resolution image ever of a protoplanetary disc from ALMA, and that won't be easily beaten in the future!"</p><p>We think that by studying TW Hydrae, we'll be able to better understand how our own planet and solar system came to be.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-new-details-ceres-solar-system-2016-3">NASA just revealed a ton of new details about the most mysterious planet in the solar system</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="psMHJhMjE6AeOio43Ue2LrhDuybdTwL7" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

This could be the most detailed photo of a ?new? Earth-like planet ever taken

<p class="source"><span><a href="http://astropix.ipac.caltech.edu/image/spitzer/ssc2008-05a">NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of Earth-like planets.</p><ul><li><strong>NASA's has detected 219 possible new planets.</strong></li><li><strong>About 10 of these new worlds may be Earth-sized and habitable. </strong></li><li><strong>The Kepler space telescope that discovered the new planets has so far found more than 4,000 worlds.</strong></li><li><strong>The results suggest that there may be billions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy.</strong></li></ul><p>NASA scientists on Monday announced the discovery of 219 new objects beyond our solar system that are almost certainly planets.</p><p>What's more, 10 of these worlds may be rocky, about the size of Earth, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-most-like-earth-support-alien-life-2016-5">habitable</a>.</p><p>The data comes from the space agency's long-running Kepler exoplanet-hunting mission. From March 2009 <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-kepler-spacecraft-planet-hunting-mission-is-over-2013-8">through May 2013</a>, Kepler stared down about 145,000 sun-like stars in a tiny section of the night sky near the constellation Cygnus.</p><p>Most of the stars in Kepler's view were hundreds or thousands of light-years away, so there's little chance humans will ever visit them - or at least any time soon. However, the data could tell astronomers how common Earth-like planets are, and what the chances of finding <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-warning-space-aliens-seti-2016-12">intelligent extraterrestrial life</a> might be.</p><p>"We have taken our telescope and we have counted up how many planets are similar to the Earth in this part of the sky," Susan Thompson, a Kepler research scientist at the SETI Institute, said during a press conference at NASA Ames Research Center on Monday.</p><p>"We said, 'how many planets there are similar to Earth?' With the data I have, I can now make that count," she said. "We're going to determine how common other planets are. Are there other places we could live in the galaxy that we don't yet call home?"</p><p>Added to Kepler's previous discoveries, the 10 new Earth-like planet candidates make 49 total, Thompson said. If any of them have stable atmospheres, there's even a chance they could harbor alien life.</p><h2>The new Earths next door?</h2><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-releases-kepler-survey-catalog-with-hundreds-of-new-planet-candidates">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p><p>Scientists wouldn't say too much about the 10 new planets, only that they appear to be roughly Earth-sized and orbit in their stars' "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldilocks-exoplanet-habitability-internal-heat-2016-8">habitable zone</a>" - where water is likely to be stable and liquid, not frozen or boiled away. That doesn't guarantee these planets are actually habitable, though. Beyond harboring a stable atmosphere, things like <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldilocks-exoplanet-habitability-internal-heat-2016-8">plate tectonics</a> and not being <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-habitable-atmosphere-jwst-2016-9">tidally locked</a> may also be essential.</p><p>However, Kepler researchers suspect that almost countless Earth-like planets are waiting to be found. This is because the telescope can only "see" exoplanets that transit, or pass, in front of their stars.</p><p>The transit method of detecting planets that Kepler scientists use involves looking for dips in a star's brightness, which are caused by a planet blocking out a fraction of the starlight (similar to how the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-total-solar-eclipses-will-end-2017-6">moon eclipses the sun</a>).</p><p><br />Because most planets orbit in the same disk or plane, and that plane is rarely aligned with Earth, that means Kepler can only see a fraction of distant solar systems. (Exoplanets that are angled slightly up or down are invisible to the transit method.)</p><p>Despite those challenges, Kepler has revealed the existence of 4,034 planet candidates, with <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-releases-kepler-survey-catalog-with-hundreds-of-new-planet-candidates">2,335 of those</a> confirmed as exoplanets. And these are just the worlds in 0.25% of the night sky.</p><p>"In fact, you'd need 400 Keplers to cover the whole sky," Mario Perez, a Kepler program scientist at NASA, said during the briefing.</p><p>The biggest number of planets appear to be a completely new class of planets, called "mini-Neptunes," Benjamin Fulton, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and California Institute of Technology, said during the briefing.</p><p>Such worlds are between the size of Earth and the gas giants of our solar system, and are likely the most numerous kind in the universe. "Super-Earths," which are rocky planets that can be up to 10 times more massive than our own, are also very common.</p><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.caltech.edu/news/new-branch-family-tree-exoplanets-discovered-78703">NASA/Kepler/Caltech (T. Pyle)</a></span></p><p>While just 49 of Kepler's thousands of planet candidates are Earth-sized and in a habitable zone, the discovery has rocked the scientific world: This could mean that billions of such worlds exist in the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-milky-way-galaxy-looks-like-2016-9">Milky Way galaxy</a> alone.</p><p>"This number could have been very, very small," Courtney Dressing, an astronomer at Caltech, said during the briefing. "I, for one, am ecstatic."</p><h2>Kepler's big back-up plan</h2><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/searching-for-far-out-and-wandering-worlds">NASA Ames/W. Stenzel and JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt</a></span></p><p>Kepler finished collecting its first mission's data in May 2013. It has taken scientists years to analyze that information because it's often difficult parse, interpret, and verify.</p><p>Thompson said this new Kepler data analysis will be the last for this leg of the telescope's first observations. Kepler suffered two hardware failures (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-kepler-telescope-from-emergency-mode-2016-4">and then some</a>) that limited its ability to aim at one area of the night sky, ending its mission to look at stars that are similar to the sun.</p><p>But scientists' back-up plan, called <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014PASP..126..398H">the K2 mission</a>, kicked off in May 2014. It takes advantage of Kepler's restricted aim and uses it to study a variety of objects in space, including supernovas, baby stars, comets, and even asteroids. </p><p>Although K2 is just getting off the ground, other telescopes have had success in these types of endeavors. In February, for example, a different one revealed the existence of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/earth-like-planets-seven-trappist-1-system-2017-02">seven rocky, Earth-size planets circling a red dwarf star</a>.</p><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of what it might look like on the surface of TRAPPIST-1f, a rocky planet 39 light-years away from Earth.</p><p>Such dwarf stars are the most common in the universe and can have more angry outbursts of solar flares and coronal mass ejections than sun-like stars.</p><p>But paradoxically, they seem to harbor the most small, rocky planets in a habitable zone in the universe - and thus may be <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-dwarf-planets-proxima-b-aliens-2016-8">excellent places to look for signs of alien life</a>.</p>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-warning-space-aliens-seti-2016-12">Stephen Hawking warned us about contacting aliens, but this astronomer says it's 'too late'</a></h3>                                    Please enable Javascript to watch this video

NASA has discovered hundreds of potential new planets - and 10 may be like Earth

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Venus is like Earth on fire. Although Venus is about 10 times hotter, the planets are similar in size and gravity.<p>And billions of years ago, Venus might have had something else in common with Earth.</p><p>Scientists have reason to believe this inferno of a planet was once home to bountiful Earth-like oceans. That's because the planet contains atmospheric deuterium, a form of hydrogen found in our own oceans.</p><p>But now the planet is bone dry - it's atmosphere contains as much as 100,000 times less water than Earth's.</p><p>Scientists have found evidence that electric winds may have stripped Venus of all of its water. These new findings could change the way we approach space exploration in the future.</p><h2><strong>Where did all the water go?</strong></h2><p>It would be no shock if Venus' water simply boiled away under the intense heat of the sun. But, if that were the case, there should be telltale molecules lingering in the atmosphere.</p><p>For a while, scientists thought that flows of charged particles from the sun, called solar winds, had zapped the planet dry.</p><p>But according to a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL068327/full">new study</a> in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, it was an intense electric wind that stripped the planet of its water. These sweeping electric fields can actually overcome a planet's gravity, pulling molecules from the atmosphere into space.</p><p>"We found that the electric wind, which people thought was just one small cog in a big machine, is in fact this big monster that's capable of sucking the water from Venus by itself," Glyn Collinson, co-author of the new study, said in a <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/electric-wind-can-strip-earth-like-planets-of-oceans-atmospheres">statement</a>.</p><p>This electric wind, at about 10 volts, is at least five times as strong as Earth's, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/21/amazing-scientists-crack-mystery-of-venuss-vanished-water/">The Washington Post reports</a>. Scientists still aren't sure why Venus' electric wind is so much stronger than Earth's, but they think it might have something to do with how close Venus is to the sun.</p><h2><strong>What this means</strong></h2><p>The researchers believe this is a crucial finding for the future of space exploration. Knowing more about the causes and effects of electric winds will inform our search for extraterrestrial life on exoplanets.</p><p>It could also play a factor with what&#xa0;planets we decide to colonize in our own solar system.</p><p>"Although Mars gets the lion's share of attention for future human missions, scientists have pointed to the Venusian atmosphere as a candidate for floating colonies," The Washington Post writes. "The trip to Venus would take less travel time, and the planet boasts better radiation protection and a more amenable pressure."</p><p>But these intense electric winds might thwart future plans to set up camp on the hellish planet.</p><p>"It's amazing, shocking," NASA's Glyn A. Collinson, an expert in atmospheric electric fields and an author of the new study, said in the statement. "We never dreamt an electric wind could be so powerful that it can suck oxygen right out of an atmosphere into space."</p><p>Watch NASA explain how these electric winds stripped Venus of its water in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i4yspmlILY">video</a> below:</p><p><div></div></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-tests-new-tech-to-discover-earth-like-planets-2016-5">NASA is building a space machine the size of a baseball diamond to discover new planets like Earth</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="E1YXZyMzE6gdNBmZsqGBjtBYQPs9kkcJ" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Scientists might have finally solved the mystery of Venus' disappearing water

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">Mega-Earth, or Kepler-10c, is the giant to the left. </p></div><p></p></div></div>On June 2, scientists announced <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/rocky-mega-earth-planet-kepler-10c-2014-6">the discovery of a brand new type of planet</a> - a rocky giant 17 times Earth's mass, which they dubbed a "mega-Earth."</p>
<p>Mega-Earths were thought to be impossible based on what we know and thought about how planets form. This planet's existence prompts many questions about rocky planets - the most likely candidates to harbor life.</p>
<p>While the mega-Earth itself is thought to be too close to its sun and too hot to harbor life, its discovery has changed how we think about searching for habitable exoplanets in two big ways:</p>
<h2>Huge and habitable</h2>
<p>It was previously thought that once a planet reached <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/kepler-space-telescope-spies-a-mega-earth/2014/06/02/b73cf006-e8e7-11e3-afc6-a1dd9407abcf_story.html">the mass of 10 Earths</a>, it would accrue so much hydrogen that it would turn into a gas giant like Jupiter, a planet without a surface.</p>
<p>Because of this, scientists had not looked to these large planets as places where life could form, or more specifically, where we could land and set up shop (in the distant future in which interstellar travel might be possible).</p>
<h2>Ancient Earths</h2>
<p>Not only did they think the planet was too big to be rocky, they also thought it was too old.</p>
<p>The mega-Earth orbits a star that is 11 billion years old, formed less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang. At that time, the ingredients to make a rocky planet were scarce.</p>
<p>Scientists were very surprised to find a rocky ancient planet that had formed when its constituent ingredients were not abundant in the universe.</p>
<p>We may now have to cast a second look on ancient solar systems since we previously thought they could never have rocky, Earth-like planets.</p>
<h2>The search begins anew</h2>
<p>With these two extraordinary facts in hand, scientists may want to rescan solar systems with giant or old planets, to check if they could be rocky and Earth-like instead of gaseous. This discovery is likely to lead to many more mega-Earth planets, hopefully ones ripe for life.</p>
<p>One equation in particular shows just how a new type of potentially habitable planet could change the life-hunting game: the Drake equation. It's a way of estimating the number of intelligent communicative civilizations that might exist in the Milky Way.</p>
<p>Here it is in its full mathy goodness, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation">thanks to Wikipedia</a>:<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation">Screenshot from Wikipedia Drake Equation</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>While the equation is controversial and is primarily used for "<a href="http://www.seti.org/drakeequation">stimulating intellectual curiosity</a>," it is interesting to consider how it might change in light of the new findings.</p>
<p>The mega-Earth finding is likely to increase the variable <em>ne,</em>the number of planets in a solar system suitable for life. That will increase our estimation of the N, the number of intelligent, extraterrestrial civilizations out there.</p>
<p>Without finding this mega-Earth we might never have thought to look at these giant planets.</p>

How The New Mega-Earth Will Change Our Search For Extraterrestrial Life

Neil deGrasse Tyson On Earth-Like Planets

<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

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/goes-16-image-gallery">NOAA/NASA</a></span></p><p class="caption">A view of Earth taken at 1:07 p.m. EDT on January 15, 2017 by the GOES-16 satellite.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>A handful of recent discoveries indicate that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/exoplanets-recently-discovered-best-chance-alien-life-2019-9">Earth-like planets</a> are common in the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/milky-way">Milky Way</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa">NASA's</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/kepler-telescope">Kepler space telescope</a> spurred new research into planets outside our <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/solar-system">solar system</a>.</li><li>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 alone - and they may be even more similar to our home planet than scientists expected.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>A growing body of research indicates that there are likely billion of Earth-like <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/exoplanets">planets</a> that we haven't yet discovered.</p><p>That's good <keyword id="6355005" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="news">news</keyword> for astronomers seeking alien life. Since Earth is our only example of a life-bearing world, scientists try to pinpoint planets like ours when they search for life elsewhere.</p><p>That's what NASA's Kepler space telescope set out to do. Kepler scanned the skies from 2009 to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/r-nasa-retires-its-planet-hunter-the-kepler-space-telescope-2018-10">2018</a>, and it found over 4,000 planets outside our solar system. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/exoplanets-recently-discovered-best-chance-alien-life-2019-9">A dozen or so of these planets</a> seem like prime real estate for life.</p><p>Kepler's data has produced a growing body of research that indicates there are likely billions more Earth-like planets that we haven't discovered.</p><p>Here's why scientists are starting to think planets like Earth might be common.</p>

A handful of recent discoveries has transformed our understanding of Earth-like planets in the galaxy. Here's why Earths might be common.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://images.nasa.gov/details-PIA19825.html">NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p><p class="caption">An artist's concept of the planet Kepler-452b (right), the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of a star that is similar to our sun. The planet is 60% larger than Earth (shown left for comparison).</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Using data from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa">NASA's</a> planet-hunting <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/r-nasa-retires-its-planet-hunter-the-kepler-space-telescope-2018-10">Kepler</a> telescope, scientists have estimated that one in every four sun-sized stars has an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-tess-telescope-finds-nearby-super-earth-sub-neptunes-2019-7">Earth-like planet</a> orbiting it.</li><li>That translates to about 10 billion planets in our galaxy that could <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-planet-found-using-data-from-nasa-kepler-telescope-2019-1">hold liquid water</a> - which could make them habitable to alien life.</li><li>Understanding how many potentially habitable planets exist in the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-3d-map-of-milky-way-warped-shape-2019-7">Milky Way</a> could help researchers plan future projects to search for signs of alien life.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Our galaxy could be littered with warm, watery planets like Earth.</p><p>That's the conclusion of researchers at Penn State University, who used data from NASA's Kepler telescope to <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ab31ab">estimate</a> the number of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way. Their results, published in <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ab31ab">The Astronomical Journal</a> this week, suggest that an Earth-like planet orbits one in every four sun-like stars. Totaled up, that means there could be up to 10 billion Earth-like worlds in our home galaxy.</p><p>The estimate is an important step in the search for alien life, since any potential life on other planets would most likely be found on an Earth-like world warm enough to hold liquid water. </p><p>So a better understanding of the potential number of Earth-like planets in the galaxy can inform projects like the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, which will launch into space in the mid 2020s and hunt signs of for oxygen and water vapor on distant planets.</p><p>"We get a lot more return on our investment if we know when and where to look," Eric Ford, a professor of astrophysics and co-author of the new study, told Business Insider.</p><p>Ford's team defined an Earth-like planet as being anywhere from three-quarters to one-and-a-half times the size of Earth, and orbiting its star every 237 to 500 days. That's presumably within the star's habitable zone - the "range of orbital distances at which the planets could support liquid water on their surfaces," as Ford described it in a <a href="http://science.psu.edu/news/ford8-2019">press release</a>.</p><p><span>"For astronomers who are trying to figure out what is a good design for the next major space observatory, this piece of information is an integral part of that planning process," he said.</span></p><h2>5 to 10 billion planets like Earth</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://astropix.ipac.caltech.edu/image/spitzer/ssc2008-05a">NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)</a></span></p><p class="caption">Earth-like planets have varying sizes and compositions.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The researchers' estimate is based on data from NASA's Kepler space telescope. Launched in 2009, the telescope used what's known as the transit method to find worlds outside our solar system. It watched over 530,000 stars for tiny dips in a star's brightness that could be caused by a planet passing in front of it - transits, in other words. </p><p>This work transformed our understanding of the galaxy. Kepler found more than 2,600 exoplanets, revealed that there are more planets than stars in the Milky Way, and gave researchers new insight into the diversity of planet types. The telescope also allowed scientists to confirm for the first time that many exoplanets are similar to Earth.</p><p>The telescope <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1531/nasa-retires-kepler-space-telescope-passes-planet-hunting-torch/">retired</a> last year after it ran out of fuel, but passed the planet-hunting torch to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which launched in April 2018.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/mission-manager-update-kepler-recovered-and-returned-to-the-k2-mission/">NASA</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of NASA's Kepler space telescope.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Overall, Kepler's results suggested that 20% to 50% of the stars visible in the night sky had Earth-like planets in their habitable zones.</p><p>But Ford's team didn't want to estimate the number of Earth-like planets in the galaxy based solely on the exoplanets Kepler found, because the transit method is only good at detecting large planets close to their stars (since they block out more light). It's not great, however, at finding small planets farther from their stars. Plus, Kepler's method was biased toward small, dim stars about one third the mass of our sun.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://images.nasa.gov/details-KSC-2009-1609.html">NASA/Jim Grossmann</a></span></p><p class="caption">Workers at the Hazardous Processing Facility at Astrotech in Titusville, Florida prepare a scale to weigh the Kepler spacecraft, in the background.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>So to estimate how many planets Kepler might have missed, the researchers created computer simulations of hypothetical universes of stars and planets, based on a combination of Kepler's planet catalogue and a survey of our galaxy's stars from the European Space Agency's <a href="https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Gaia">Gaia spacecraft</a>. Then the researchers' program "observed" those stars as Kepler would have.</p><p>The simulation gave the scientists a sense of how many exoplanets in each hypothetical universe Kepler would have detected, and which kinds. They could then compare that data to what the real Kepler telescope detected in our universe to estimate the abundance of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars. </p><p>"There are significant uncertainties in what range of stars you label 'sun-like,' what range of orbital distances you consider to be 'in the habitable zone,' what range of planet sizes you consider to be 'Earth-like,'" Ford said. "Given those uncertainties, both 5 and 10 billion are reasonable estimates."</p><h2>Improving the search for aliens</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/confirmation-of-toasty-tess-planet-leads-to-surprising-find-of-promising-world">NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of a potentially habitable exoplanet 31 light-years from Earth.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The next step in the search for alien life is to study potentially habitable planets to figure out what they're made of.</p><p><span>"Scientists are particularly interested in searching for biomarkers - molecules indicative of life - in the atmospheres of roughly Earth-size planets," Ford said.</span></p><p>Even if a planet is in a star's habitable zone, it still needs a substantial atmosphere to trap enough heat to sustain liquid water on its surface. Scientists can calculate the composition of an exoplanet's atmosphere by measuring how its star's light behaves as it passes through.</p><p><span>This is where Ford's research comes into play: If Earth-like worlds are abundant, there could be enough of them close by for NASA scientists to study with a smaller, cheaper telescope. If all the Earth-y worlds are far away, though, NASA would need to rely on more far-reaching telescopes.</span></p><p><span>The researchers recommended that future space missions plan for a range of possible incidences of Earth-like planets - between one for every 33 sun-like stars and one for every two sun-like stars.</span></p><p>"One of the important things here is not just giving a single number but understanding the range of possibilities," Ford said. "So that people who have to make decisions could hope for the best and plan for the worst and still be able to come up with a solid scientific strategy."</p>     <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-super-earth-2018-6">Super-Earths are real and they could be an even better place to live than Earth</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

There could be up to 10 billion warm and cozy Earth-like planets in our home galaxy, new research reveals

<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><div class="KonaFilter image-container full"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Science@NASA and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center</span></p><p class="caption">Habitable zone planets (from left to right) Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are shown here to scale relative to Earth.</p></div><p></p></div>A total of 715 new planets were recently found in our region of the Milky Way, almost doubling the number of exoplanets we know of. NASA announced the find, made using the Kepler space telescope and a revolutionary new technique, on February 27.</p>
<p>From the launch of the Kepler telescope in 2009 to 2011, scientists detected 3,600 potential planets. They detected the planets by measuring slight dips in the brightness of nearby stars as the planets passed in front of them like below:</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>NASA/Screenshot</span></p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p>This was effective, but left the scientists with a new task - to confirm these are planets and not some other weird space event, they had to figure out how to distinguish the real planets from the fakes.</p>
<p>To do that, they used a new technique that they called "verification by multiplicity," which relies on probability. <a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011400/a011466/index.html">Here's how NASA explains it </a>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Kepler observes 150,000 stars, and has found a few thousand of those to have planet candidates. If the candidates were randomly distributed among Kepler's stars, only a handful would have more than one planet candidate. However, Kepler observed hundreds of stars that have multiple planet candidates. Through a careful study of this sample, these 715 new planets were verified.</p>
<p>Basically, they looked for clusters of candidate planets and stars and then sifted more closely to identify authentic planets. It's pretty brilliant.</p>
<p>Check out the change in the number of planet discoveries since they began using the new method:</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>NASA/Screenshot</span></p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p>In the course of their search, the team found four planets in what they call the "habitable zone" - the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of a planet may be suitable for water. Scientists are now attempting to determine whether the planets are gaseous planets (like Saturn) or water worlds (like Earth).</p>
<p>Here's what they think the  planets look like, which were created based on the size of the planet and how far they think it is from its star:</p>
<h2>Kepler-69c is 70% larger than Earth. It completes one orbit around its star every 242 days. <div class="KonaFilter image-container full"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Science@NASA and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center</span></p></div><p></p></div>Kepler-62e is 60% larger than Earth. It completes one orbit around its star every 122 days.</h2>
<h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container full"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Science@NASA and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center</span></p></div><p></p></div>Kepler-62f is 40 percent larger than Earth. It orbits a star located 1,200 light-years from our planet.</h2>
<h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container full"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Science@NASA and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center</span></p></div><p></p></div>Kepler-296f orbits a star half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth.</h2>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>NASA</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>

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