NASA’s
Kepler Space Telescope discovered an Earth-like planet circling a nearby star
within the Goldilocks zone of our galaxy. Kepler-186f is around 500 light-years
from Earth in the Cygnus constellation. The habitable zone, also identified as
the Goldilocks zone, is the area around a star within which planetary-mass
objects with enough atmospheric pressure can sustain liquid water at their
surfaces.
While it has
been projected that there are at least 40 billion Earth-sized planets circling
in our Milky Way Galaxy, this specific finding is labelled the first
Earth-sized planet to be discovered in the habitable zone of another star.
What does
this mean?
In addition
to Kepler-186f, there are 4 other planets that circle a nearby star within the
Kepler-186f system. What this means is that if the neighbouring star to this
planet is just like our Sun, then the likelihood of life on this planet
exponentially increases.
“We know of
only one planet where life survives – Earth. When we hunt for life outside our
solar system, we emphasis on discovering planets with features that mimic that
of Earth,” said Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI Institute at
NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the
paper published in the journal Science. “Discovering a habitable zone planet
similar to Earth in size is a major breakthrough.”
The
neighboring star to Kepler-186f has half the mass and size as our solar
system’s Sun and only gets one-third of the energy that we get from our Sun.
Kepler-186f circles its star once every 130 days.
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