Seven Earth-like planets are discovered by NASA orbiting a single nearby star and these new worlds of planets could hold a life.
The astronomers of NASA discovered seven Earth-like planets orbiting a single nearby star and maybe these new worlds of planets could hold life. The new seven earth like planets are located outside of our solar system and orbit a star.so these planets are named as Exoplanets.
Facts Revealed under Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope(TRAPPIST) by NASA.
All the seven planets are named under the system of Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope(TRAPPIST-1). All these planets are named after TRAPPIST, which is located in Chile This telescope first discovered three of the planets in this system in May 2016. With the help of European Space telescope called Spitzer. It was confirmed the existence of two of these planets and moreover, it also discovered five more planets. So, finally, the total number of planets in these systems are seven.
The star in TRAPPIST-1 is classified as an ultra-cool dwarf, which NASA points out is quite different to Sun. The ultra-cool dwarf has a lower mass than the Sun, and also much lower temperatures which mean is even if planets are orbiting close to the dwarf sun, it is so cool that liquid water will be able to survive on these planets.
The ultra-cool star shines 200 times dimmer than the sun, so there would be twilight at all times on these planets, and the star glows red.
Unlike Earth, these planets are tidally locked to the star This means that one side of the planet has the only day, and the other side has only night. The weather conditions on these planets are different when compared with earth.
All the seven planets are of earth sized and it would be the best target for studying the atmospheres of potentially habitable, Earth-size worlds said, Michael Gillon, principal investigator of the TRAPPIST exoplanet survey. All the planets are rocky and they have not confirmed the presence of water yet.
Scientists also said they need to study the atmospheres before determining whether all these seven planets are rocky or not which could support some sort of life. But it already shows just how many Earth-size planets could be out there. Two planets closest to the host star have already shown signs of no atmosphere, which means are potentially rocky in nature.
The system of seven planets after Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope holds the record for the greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside the solar system.
Spitzer, Hubble, and Kepler will do initial surveys on these seven planets ahead of NASA’s launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.
A new Web telescope will detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone, and other components of all the seven planet’s atmosphere which also includes temperature, surface pressure, etc to verify if these Exoplanets can be inhabited by life in the future or not.