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 issued on 27th January in the journal Science. “Discovering
a habitable zone planet similar to Earth in size is a major breakthrough.”
The
neighbouring 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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