It may seem that NASA is constantly said about the discovery of the “new” earth-like exoplanets, because from time to time news on this subject slip on the main page of our site. It is always interesting to know that somewhere there might be a planet with the potential to nest life. And all this thanks to a highly successful space telescope Kepler, which uses the flickering and dimming of distant stars to find planets in their orbits. However, the recent discovery of Kepler (219 new planetary candidates, 10 of which are Earth-sized and located in the zone of Goldilocks) was the last: yesterday was the last official planetary search results according to the mission of Kepler.
It is necessary to comprehend. In the end, the space telescope Kepler is still in space looking for new planets — and probably will continue to do so for about a year. But the primary mission of the telescope ended prematurely when, in 2013, everything went to pieces. At the telescope there are four wheels that keep it in the direction of a certain area of sky, so that he could monitor any invisible scintillations of the stars, indicating the presence of the planet. And here are two of the wheels broke. Instead of completely rolling the mission of the unit, NASA engineers were able to use the sun as a virtual wheel; the physical power of light hitting a solar panel in Kepler holds it in place, while all the other wheels are pushing in the opposite direction. Kepler was given a second chance with a new mission called K2.
K2 already found several exoplanets, its right, but its task is a little different. During their first mission, Kepler stared at one patch of sky in search of planetary activity among the 150 000 stars we have space on the backyard. K2 depends on the position of the sun, a telescope can’t I just point to where you want scientists. And as soon as they choose the appropriate target — with interesting stars and to the sun could help scientists have about 80 days before the telescope will move again. K2 found (and will find) new planets, but the amount of data in it and close is not comparable with the volume of the original mission.
And this brings us back to latest news NASA: four years after the hardware failure of Kepler’s massive catalog of data that he gathered, was finally combed to the full satisfaction of NASA.
“All the data of the original Kepler mission have been analysed several times,” says Charlie Sobek, Manager of the mission Kepler and K2. “This latest catalog is a re-analysis using improved software that makes the catalogue especially useful for drawing statistical conclusions. This is the final results of the search for planets”.
A new analysis of the data brings the total number of planetary candidates (potential planets that do not have to be confirmed) to 4034. Slightly more than half of them have been confirmed by other telescopes. Of the 50 planets have to be earth size and be located in a potentially habitable zone of a star, confirmed only a 30.
The new analysis also revealed something about the planetary family tree: measuring the exact size of some of the Kepler planets, scientists have discovered that the “small” planets (smaller than gas giants like Jupiter) are divided into two distinct categories. They are either relatively close to earth’s size (some super-earths several times more massive than our planet, but it is also relatively close by cosmic standards), or closer to Neptune in size, forms a “gas dwarfs” or “mini-Neptune”. The analysis shows that the new planet very similar to Earth in size, but some of them take a dose of gas that brings them to a heavier class.
“We like to compare this study, this classification of the planets in order, as biologists identificeret new species of animals,” says Benjamin Fulton, a PhD candidate in the University of Hawaii at Mano. “The discovery of the two different groups of exoplanets akin to the discovery of individual branches of life, mammals and dinosaurs”.
Determining where the planetary spectrum is the Land and its close relatives, can help us determine how to develop the planet — and finally how often they evolyutsioniruet with all the components that make life possible on Earth. Kepler has done an amazing job on the development of planetary science. And although technically this was done with the first part of the mission, it is likely that scientists will continue from time to time to find a strange planet from his massive data set.
Hundreds, thousands: what’s important in the “newly discovered” exoplanets?
Ilya Hel