Nasa Discovers what appears to be Earth Like Planets with Potential Alien Life
A title fit for a scientific movie has been hitting headlines all over the country since early Monday morning. Nasa discovered hundreds of potential planets sparking up hopes of finding other similar to that of ours, Earth. The objects were found by Nasa’s Kepler Mission.
Kepler Mission is the space observatory designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. The Kepler has a huge telescope with the capability to monitor the brightness of over 145,000 stars in a fixed field of view in three constellations in the Milky Way. The 95 megapixel camera records and analyses the passages of the planets around those stars by measuring the changes of light in radiation.
There are potentially 140 new discoveries that could be similar to earth. This goes against all the results that have been stated by scientists who believe that small and Earth-like planets would be less frequent.
Nasa’s on the mission website explains;
"From the orbital size and the temperature of the star, the planet's characteristic temperature can be calculated,"
"From this the question of whether or not the planet is habitable (not necessarily inhabited) can be answered."
One of the astronomer’s on the Kepler mission, Dimitar Sasselov revelead the findings in a conference at Oxford earlier this month. Sasselov is a professor of Astronomy at the Harvard University.
He said,
"The figures suggest our galaxy, the Milky Way, will contain 100 million habitable planets,"
"With our own little telescope just in the next two years we will able to identify at least 60 of them.
"There is a lot more work we need to do with this, but the statistical result is loud and clear, and it is that planets like our own Earth are out there."
It is a terrifying yet obvious feeling that I get from these results. From all the old Hollywood movies and countless stories passed on by generations about alien life could indeed be true.
by Mila Braz
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