Many of you may have seen the news about the "most Earth-like habitable planet" discovered. Well, the result is pretty convincing, but the implications may not be quite as grand as what people have been talking about...
First off, the discovery. The planet was found using the Kepler satellite, which is a space telescope that just looks at one patch of the sky (or did, until it broke). Kepler was looking for transiting planets, or planets that pass in front of their parent star from our point of view. When the planet goes in front of the star, we see a faint dip in the star's brightness. Detecting that small dip over and over again as the planet passes in front of the star strongly implies that there's a planet orbiting that star.
One of Kepler's mission goals was to determine how many Earth-like planets are out there. It's done a great job of finding tons of Earth-sized planets, but the planets its found are usually much, much too hot to really be Earth-like. Those planets are easier to find, but there have been a couple planets only slightly larger than Earth found in the so-called Habitable Zone of the star where the temperatures are just right for life.
This discovery was of a planet in the habitable zone of a star much fainter than the sun, known as an M dwarf class star. The really exciting part about the discovery is that the planet is only 10% bigger than the Earth, meaning it's basically Earth-like. Quite frankly, no planet has ever been found that's this Earth-like.
Now time for me to be a wet blanket. Finding planets like the Earth is great, but (you know there was going to be a but) this planet is way too far away for any sort of in-depth follow-up. Meaning even if there's life on the planet, we have no way of detecting it now or even in the near (next few decades) future.
Kepler has been great for finding Earth-like planets, but the next step is to find planets that are close by (at least, relatively close by. They would still be light years away!) And in fact, this is exactly what the 2nd part of Kepler's mission is - now that it's slightly broken it'll be looking at things a little closer to home. There are also plenty of new space telescopes coming along, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), that will enhance what Kepler has done.
The next step after finding nearby Earth-like planets is characterizing them. The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and upcoming extremely large telescopes (they're actually called 'extremely large') could be able to characterize Earth-like planets.
So when will I really get excited? Probably when we find a good target planet - a planet orbiting a nearby star that we can actually learn about. But that, unfortunately, will have to wait at least a few years.
First off, the discovery. The planet was found using the Kepler satellite, which is a space telescope that just looks at one patch of the sky (or did, until it broke). Kepler was looking for transiting planets, or planets that pass in front of their parent star from our point of view. When the planet goes in front of the star, we see a faint dip in the star's brightness. Detecting that small dip over and over again as the planet passes in front of the star strongly implies that there's a planet orbiting that star.
One of Kepler's mission goals was to determine how many Earth-like planets are out there. It's done a great job of finding tons of Earth-sized planets, but the planets its found are usually much, much too hot to really be Earth-like. Those planets are easier to find, but there have been a couple planets only slightly larger than Earth found in the so-called Habitable Zone of the star where the temperatures are just right for life.
This discovery was of a planet in the habitable zone of a star much fainter than the sun, known as an M dwarf class star. The really exciting part about the discovery is that the planet is only 10% bigger than the Earth, meaning it's basically Earth-like. Quite frankly, no planet has ever been found that's this Earth-like.
Now time for me to be a wet blanket. Finding planets like the Earth is great, but (you know there was going to be a but) this planet is way too far away for any sort of in-depth follow-up. Meaning even if there's life on the planet, we have no way of detecting it now or even in the near (next few decades) future.
Kepler has been great for finding Earth-like planets, but the next step is to find planets that are close by (at least, relatively close by. They would still be light years away!) And in fact, this is exactly what the 2nd part of Kepler's mission is - now that it's slightly broken it'll be looking at things a little closer to home. There are also plenty of new space telescopes coming along, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), that will enhance what Kepler has done.
The next step after finding nearby Earth-like planets is characterizing them. The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and upcoming extremely large telescopes (they're actually called 'extremely large') could be able to characterize Earth-like planets.
So when will I really get excited? Probably when we find a good target planet - a planet orbiting a nearby star that we can actually learn about. But that, unfortunately, will have to wait at least a few years.
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