Astronomers have discovered seven Earth-size planets orbiting a single star, NASA announced today in a live-streamed press conference. Three of the seven planets are located in the habitable zone, also known as the “Goldilocks Zone.” The discovery sets a new record for the greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system, the agency said.
“This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Answering the question ‘are we alone’ is a top science priority and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal.”
It’s a goal that panel members say could be answered within the next two decades. “The fact that there are worlds out there just like the Earth [and that] you can imagine these worlds … [offer up] questions [like], ‘Are we alone?,’ [that could be answered] in this decade and the next decade,” Zurbuchen said during the press conference.
As of now, there is no confirmation of water on these planetary bodies, though NASA is still searching. “It’ll take a lot of observations to probe the atmospheres,” said Nikole Lewis, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. It’s also quite a hike—to get to the planets in a jet plane would take nearly 50 million years.
Learn more about the agency’s findings in the science publication Nature.
—RealClearLife Staff
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