NASA Discovers 10 More Life Supporting Planets

Date: 21 June 2017 - 22:30

News ID: ۴۰۹۱۵

WASHINGTON (Dispatches)-NASA's planet-hunting telescope has found 10 new planets outside our solar system that are likely the right size and temperature to potentially have life on them.
The Kepler telescope has found a total of 49 planets in the Goldilocks zone. And it only looked in a tiny part of the galaxy, one quarter of one percent of a galaxy that holds about 200 billion of stars.
Seven of the 10 newfound Earth-size planets circle stars that are just like ours. That doesn't mean the planets have life, but some of the most basic requirements that life needs are there, increasing the chances for life.
"It implies that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone around sun-like stars are not rare," Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb said.
The 10 Goldilocks planets are part of 219 new candidate planets that NASA has announced as part of the final batch of planets discovered in the main mission since the telescope was launched in 2009. It was designed to survey part of the galaxy to see how frequent planets are and how frequent Earth-size and potentially habitable planets are.
Kepler isn't the only way astronomers have found exoplanets and even potentially habitable ones. Between Kepler and other methods, scientists have now confirmed more than 3,600 exoplanets and found about 62 potentially habitable planets.