Three Earth-sized planets have been discovered by astronomers and believe they could have potential habitats for life.
The discovery was made by a team from the University of Liège in Belgium, led by Michael Gillon and Emmanuel Jehin who decided to take a chance and start investigating the space surrounding one “ultracool” dwarf star, according to CNN.
The star, which is barely the size of Jupiter and much cooler than our own sun, amazed the researchers who discovered three orbiting planets that are the most similar to Earth outside of our solar system. The researchers think that they could contain temperate-like conditions that could potentially sustain life like that on our own planet.
The TRAPPIST-1 star – named after the telescope that made the discovery – is a brown dwarf and these types of star don’t often have planets orbiting them. The team used an infrared spectrum to study the spacing between the planets and the star to determine how big the exoplanets were and how far they are situated from their sun. What they discovered was that the distance they orbit could harbor conditions for water to exist in liquid form.
“Systems around these tiny stars are the only places where we can detect life on an Earth-sized exoplanet with our current technology,” Gillon states. “So if we want to find life elsewhere in the universe, this is where we should start to look.”
The planets and their star are located 40 light years away which makes it impossible for current space travel to reach but powerful telescopes can be used to monitor them for signs of carbon dioxide, oxygen and methane gases however more research needs to be made to find out if these planets have atmospheres that can accommodate these.
Adam Burgasser of University of California in San Diego, who also contributed to the published study, thinks that the discovery of these planets could mean that there are more out there than previously thought rising to the idea that there could potentially be a higher chance of life existing outside of our solar system.
“If Earth-like planets around these stars turn out to be common, there may be many more habitable planets out there than current estimates predict.”
The study was recently published in the journal Nature.
image credit: ESO/M.Kornmesser