The NASA spacecraft, “Kepler” has discovered 706 planets and up to 140 of the newly-found planets are similar in size to Earth, The Sunday Times reports. Here is an opinion from a fellow at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Oleg Malkov, concerning whether these planets are habitable.
There is a high probability of discovering habitable planets. Astronomers see no reason why our Earth should be the only habitable planet in our galaxy, says Oleg Malkov.
On the other hand, it is a quite complex task to discover a habitable planet or Earth-like planet with similar physical characteristics in mass and in size. The planets, which are being discovered by the “Kepler”, and the French “COROT” system, as well as the ground-based telescopes, are basically large objects, and are ten times larger than our Jupiter or Saturn, and are located close to their stars. In these circumstances it’s easy to discover a planet and the probability of discover is quite high.Invented some 400 years ago the telescope changed the people’s knowledge of the universe. They realized that planets should rotate around stars.
Since 1992 when hundreds of transiting planets were discovered, scientists have started to realize that planets can be discovered in all galaxies that have their own specific solar systems. But those were large gaseous planets. However, scientists have failed to discover Earth- or Mars-like planets yet. But no one disputes the possibility of discovering them because planetary systems are common, and every normal star is bound to have a planetary system or a companion. The presence of regular dips in star’s brightness paves the way for discovering planets by the “Kepler’s” telescope. The spacecraft observes one sector of the sky and has the possibility of registering slight but regular dips simultaneously of about 100 thousand stars. There are several reasons for such dips, including that the star could be pulsating. However, another reason could be the presence of its planets, says Oleg Malkov.
When a planet is moving across the face of its home star, it announces its presence by blocking out a small portion of starlight, which is registered by a space telescope. This is extremely precise photometric observation. A change in brightness suggests the location of one or more planets. The “Kepler” has discovered five such systems this year, but they are Jupiter-like hot planets and are located near their stars. It has completed six-week observations and registered the dips in brightness of over 700 stars. Most likely, some of them can be classified as the presence of planetary systems of these stars. Time will show how many of these systems are similar to that of our solar system.
The “Kepler’s” team of researchers hopes to publish the results of their observations early next year. However, the affirmation by The Sunday Times that the images received from deep space will change completely our idea of the universe appears far from reality.
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