MessageToEagle.com

Kepler Will Find Goldilocks Planet Within The Next Two Years

30 March, 2012

MessageToEagle.com - NASA's Kepler spacecraft is discovering a veritable avalanche of alien worlds. Recent finds include planets with double suns, massive "super-Earths" and "hot Jupiters," and a miniature solar system.

The variety of planets circling distant suns is as wonderful as it is surprising.

As the numbers mount, it seems to be just a matter of time before Kepler finds what astronomers are really looking for: an Earth-like planet orbiting its star in the "Goldilocks zone"—that is, at just the right distance for liquid water and life.

"I believe Kepler will find a 'Goldilocks planet' within the next two years," says Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a researcher at NASA HQ who specializes in exoplanet biology.

"We'll be able to point at a specific star in the night sky and say 'There it is—a planet that could support life!'"

Kepler has already located a few Earth-sized planets, but they are too close for comfort to their parent stars. These recent finds have heightened the sense that a big discovery is just around the corner.

But finding a Goldilocks planet is just the first step. Getting to know it is much more difficult.

The problem is that, in the cosmic scheme of things, Earth-sized planets are relatively small, and the ones Kepler is finding are staggeringly far away.

Most are hundreds, or even thousands, of light years away from Earth. Almost completely hidden by the glare of their parent stars, these distant pinpricks are very difficult to study.

Fortunately, NASA has a plan. "The reflected light of an exoplanet tells its story," explains Kepler Program Scientist Doug Hudgins, also at NASA HQ. "To get at that story and learn about the planet's atmosphere and composition, we can use a technique called transit spectroscopy."

The basic idea is simple: When a planet reflects the light of its parent star, the atmosphere of the planet leaves a subtle imprint on the reflection--a sort of spectral "fingerprint" that astronomers can study to learn what the planet's atmosphere is made of.




One new mission under consideration by NASA, named FINESSE, is a fingerprint specialist. Short for "Fast INfrared Exoplanet Spectroscopy Survey Explorer," FINESSE would measure the spectra of stars and their planets in two situations: once when the planet is in view, and again when the planet is hiding out behind its star.

In this way, FINESSE can separate the planet's dim light from the stellar glare and reveal the composition of the planet's atmosphere.

NASA is also considering an observatory named "TESS"--the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Supported in part by Google, the MIT-led mission is specifically designed to find exoplanets in the local galactic neighborhood.

TESS would study hundreds of stars within 50 light years of Earth, close enough to study in some detail.



"With better detectors and instruments designed to block the glare of the parent stars, these next-generation telescopes could not only find a Goldilocks planet, but also tell us what its atmosphere is made of, what sort of cloud cover graces its skies, and maybe even what the surface is like—whether oceans cover part of the globe, how much land there is, and so on," says Hudgins.

Domagal-Goldman expects big surprises: "We've found so many unexpected things about planets that now I expect to be amazed. When we can study a Goldilocks planet, I believe we'll discover something revolutionary about how life interacts with a planetary environment. Nature is so much more diverse than we anticipated."

"The possibilities," he believes, "are limitless."

MessageToEagle.com via Science/NASA

See also:
Warp-Speed Planets Are Some Of The Fastest Objects In The Milky Way

Follow MessageToEagle.com for the latest news on Facebook and Twitter !

Don't Miss Our Stories! Get Our Daily Email Newsletter

Enter your email address:


Once you have confirmed your email address, you will be subscribed to the newsletter.

Recommend this article:

Giant Ice Planets Have More Water Than Previously Thought

First Discovered Carbon-Rich Planet: Could It Harbor Life?

Astronomical Mystery: Giant Alien Planet Orbiting Three Suns

Star Changes Into An Incredible Diamond Planet

Puzzling Phenomenon: "Planet Pile-Ups" And "Planet Deserts"

Giant Jupiter - Our "Would-Be" Friend With Secrets From The Past

Subscribe To Our Space, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Earth and Xenology News!

Grab the latest RSS feeds right to your reader, desktop or mobile phone.

Subscribe to RSS headline updates from:
Powered by FeedBurner

Go to - MAIN PAGE

Copyright @ MessageToEagle.com All rights reserved.
Go to - MAIN PAGE

 Subscribe in a reader

Other Popular Articles

Unknown Powers In One Of The Most Studied Objects In The Milky Way
There are complex processes taking place in the Milky Way, which are difficult for astrophysicists to explain. Apparently, the famous Crab Nebula is a veritable bundle of energy. Two MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-Ray Imaging Cherenkov) Telescopes on the Canary island of La Palma, confirm that the pulsar at the centre of this famous object is a great bundle of energy.

Hidden Misshapen Celestial "Wonder"
It is one of the brightest and strangest objects in the Milky Way - the corpse of a star that exploded around 1000 years ago. Only a handful of such young supernova remnants are known. The object named G350.1-0.3 is also incredibly small (only eight light years across) and young in astronomical terms.

Alien Species Living In The Inner Milky Way Could Be In Danger
Few people doubt there is intelligent alien life in the Milky Way galaxy, but where can we expect to find it? Astronomers think that while the inner sector of the MIlky Way Galaxy may be the most likely to support habitable worlds. Unfortunately some of these places are also most dangerous to all life-forms.

Black Holes With No 'Table Manners' Eat Two Courses At Once!
It is still unknown how the supermassive black holes (SMBH) in galaxy centres accrete gas and grow. Researchers from the University of Leicester (UK) and Monash University in Australia have investigated how some black holes got so big so fast that they are billions of times heavier than the sun.

Mercury Surprises Scientists
On March 17, MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) completed its one-year primary mission, orbiting Mercury, capturing nearly 100,000 images, and recording data that reveals new information about the planet's core, topography, and the mysterious radar bright material in the permanently shadowed areas near the poles.

Living Earth Simulator - Supercomputer Predicting The Future
In Douglas Adams book the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we encounter a machine called Deep Thought. It is the most powerful computer ever built. Deep Thought is capable of answering questions concerning life, the Universe, and simply everything. Now scientists are planning to create a similar machine. It is called the Living Earth Simulator (LES).

Supernova's Powers Drastically Altered The Massive Star
A new X-ray study of the remains of an exploded star indicates that the supernova that disrupted the massive star may have turned it inside out in the process. Using very long observations of Cassiopeia A (or Cas A), a team of scientists has mapped the distribution of elements in the supernova remnant in unprecedented detail.

Proof Of How The Universe Is Changing

Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.

Bright Star In The Constellation Lyra Is Cooler Than The Human Body
The coldest class of stars have temperatures as cool as the human body. Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success. When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see.

Thermonuclear Burning In A Neutron Star Detected For The First Time!
It's a very important discovery! For the first time, an international team of scientists have detected all phases of thermonuclear burning in a neutron star, located close to the center of the galaxy in the globular cluster Terzan 5.

Astronomical Mystery - Tremendous Explosion And Appearance Of Odd Rings
Twenty five years ago, on 1987 February 23, the brightest supernova of modern times was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The collision occurred at speeds near 60 million kilometers per hour and shock-heats the ring material causing it to glow.
Over time, astronomers have watched and waited for the expanding debris from this tremendous stellar explosion to crash into previously expelled material...

Solar Tornadoes As Wide As Five Earths Discovered
Solar tornadoes several times as wide as the Earth can be generated in the solar atmosphere, say researchers in the UK. "This is perhaps the first time that such a huge solar tornado is filmed by an imager. Previously much smaller solar tornadoes were found my SOHO satellite. But they were not filmed," says Dr. Xing Li, of Aberystwyth University.

W3Counter