The quest for life outside earth has just took a major turn. NASA announced a new system of exoplanets which are Earth-size and could likely hold life,near our solar neighbourhood. NASA telescope found the earth-sized planets possess suitable atmosphere for life. The exoplanets are located just 40 light years away from our solar system.
Spitzer Space Telescope unvieled The TRAPPIST-1, dwarf star and seven planets orbiting around the ulra cool star. However, the existence of only two of these planets was officially confirmed.
At least three out of the seven planets are claimed have habitable zone. The ultra-cool dwarf has a lower mass than the Sun and lower temperatures making planets just cool that liquid water on these planets giving maximum possible chance of flourishing life. Planets distance from the dwarf star provides appropriate temperature to maintain life.
“Around a nearby, cold, small star we found 7 rocky Earth-size planets, all of which could have liquid water – key to life as we know it.” said NASA. Scientists affirmed even exoplanets do not have life now, chances of life evolving on them are very high.
Spitzer, Hubble and Kepler telescopes are going to do initial surveys of the exoplanets ahead of NASA’s launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.
“The new Web telescope will detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone, and other components of a planet’s atmosphere, along with temperature, surface pressure” NASA added.
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