If the planets were products would be its price falling. Little more than a generation ago, we knew of only eight planets in the universe-those in our solar system. Only two of them, Earth and Mars were able to support a plausible life and only one of which is the case anyway. Planetarium questions and offer far exceeded. But now the market has been flooded. Thanks to the earth advances and space observatories, including the Kepler space telescope, which was launched in 2009 and operated for nine years to life, the exoplanet population known – orbiting planet or other star – more than 4000, exploded with about another recognized 4000, but yet to be confirmed. being virtually every star in the universe thought to be home to at least one planet, with a little ‘a whole litter of hosting. But a large sample is not to say that science nor true jackpot the world has discovered: an Earth-like planet with a solid surface, atmosphere and liquid water. If you are looking for life, that’s where it is more likely to find it. Well, (so far) been -appears have hit the jackpot life less. According to a study conducted by a research team of the Center for Planetary Sciences at University College London (UCL) and published today in Nature Astronomy, a potential planet Go garden named prosaic K2-18b, only 110 light years from found Land. “Now we know K2-18b has atmosphere and water, is the best candidate known to make for habitability,” Angelos Tsiaris, says UCL academic staff at the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the lead author of the Nature paper. Discovered in 2015, K2-18b was discovered another of the many thousands of Kepler planets. The telescope has his work not for the mapping of its target planet directly, but by the slight decrease in light detection when the planet before the orbits of the Earth facing side to its star. The frequency of the dip tells you how much each orbit requires and the amount of dimming tells you the diameter of the world’s largest planet, the more light is briefly lost. Using these techniques, scientists have determined that Kepler K2-18b is about twice the diameter of Earth and zip through its orbit once every 33 days. Two years later, European astronomers a telescope ground-based, showing the planet’s mass, the amount of oscillation K2-18b causes in his star on the planet, how to measure trace; He has shaken the world of massively increased. With these results concluded that K2-18b mass about eight times the earth weighs. This combination of diameter and mass of the planet in the set category known as super-Earth – bigger than our relatively small world; smaller than the gas giant like Jupiter and Neptune; and probably they have a solid, rocky. In terms of life that is a good start. But the agile K2-18b orbit could also problems. To complete a revolution so quickly are the planets were very close to its sun only 13 million miles, Kepler calculated scientist. Earth, by comparison, is 93 million miles from our sun. Mercury is just 36 million – give a (surface temperature 427 ° C) to 800 ° F. The proximity is not an issue for K2-18b anyway. His sun is not hot yellow star like ours, but a smaller, cooler red dwarfs. This means that their so-called habitable zone – the distance at which the surface temperatures on the ground in the narrow range are to allow liquid water to exist – would be much closer. Correction for cooling shooting red nano close astronomers that even with the closest a K2-18b surface temperatures removal has this range from a minimum of -100 ° F (-73 ° C) to a maximum value of (47 ° C) 116 ° C. However, the question remains: there is liquid water could exist in reality exist? To get the answer, the UCL team turned to one of the great driving forces of modern astronomy, the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched in 1990, Hubble before the discovery of the first exoplanet around two years, but his age is not an obstacle to productivity in progress. The researchers UCL using the Wide Field Camera 3, one of the buildings telescope instrument, and can be seen in visible wavelengths in the ultraviolet and near-infrared. That chemical signatures that were studied K2-18b atmospheres of both if the planet has an atmosphere, and if the atmosphere contains water. They knew that the work would be a challenge. “These measures were extremely difficult,” says Tsiaris. “Like trying to identify a person in ten thousand a” crowd. But the accuracy of the Hubble and tenacity of researchers grew the task and the course of many observations, they concluded that not only is the planet of water, there are a lot of their production seems to have as much as 50 per cent of ‘ atmosphere. It took a long time, but before they safe enough in their results were up to proclaim worldwide. “I got the results of a year ago,” says Tsiaris. “At first we were not sure what it meant, but we knew we had something exciting. He did repeat the analysis of a year of data to ensure that what we say we found was right. For these two facts there is no atmosphere and there’s a lot of problems with the water took. “K2-18b will certainly pay more attention to the world by astronomers are received, not only with current telescopes, but with those of the next generation including the space telescope NASA’s James Webb, tentatively set for launch in 2021; and the European Space Agency’s Space Telescope ARIEL, designed to make the atmosphere to study exoplanets, and targeted for a 2028 launch but already the results are encouraging K2-18b more investigations of possibly similar worlds. “If planets like Earth very often,” says Tsiaris, “we can say that life is very common.” This, of course, is an assumption that has not been proven yet, but with the announcement of the evidence is now more evident than ever been to. -With reporting by Maddy Roache / London Picture copyright by D. Aguilar / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Why this Earth-like planet is a big step forward in the search for life
