Finding Another Earth

- Leo Nabin Dawadi

Earth like planets (picture credit: NASA) 

Recent survey shows that we are not alone in the universe. NASA announced that they have found another earth keplers-425. Kepler-452b is an exoplanet orbiting the star kepler-452 like earth revolving around the sun.They are about 1400light year from earth. They looks like twin of our planet. This planet have suitable temperature. They have one and a half times diameter of earth and circle a star much like our own sun.There may be the chance of being rocky like earth.

Scientist said that the existence of life is still unknown. The exoplanet have same length of year. From above diagram, Each spheres represents the size of exoplanets. Among these stars, M stars are cooler and smaller than the sun.

Several other exoplanets were already discovered before it. Before this, kepler-186f was discovered having similar structure like earth . NASA’s keplers telescope is used to discover this new planets. They are revolving around the star where water in liquid form exists. The Earth’s “cousin” planet is called Kepler-186f, it is about 500 light years from the Earth. The planet system of Kepler-186 consists of five planets; four inner planet and Kepler-186f. Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130 days. Like earth which receives energy from sun,this exoplanet receives energy from its star.

Habitat zone depending upon temperature

 

This planet’s radius is about 1.1 times that of the Earth. However, the difference is that Keplers-186f rotates around a star that is very different from the Sun and there is no guarantee that this planet is habitable. Its takes 267 days to orbit its star.

Before kepler-186f ,  several other planets were already discovered such as;

·        kepler-62f exoplanet was known to be similar to the earth which was about 40% larger than our home planet.

·     Kepler-22b which was the first of keplers planet, was not detected whether it is rocky, gaseous or liquid and Super earth known as Gliese 667Cc was found to be only 22 light-years away.

Reference:

1. www.eniscoula.net/wp-content/upload

2. www.nasa.gov/jpl/finding-another-earth

3. www.telegraph.co.uk>telegraph>science