NASA’s ‘planet-hunting’ space telescope Kepler has discovered seven new planets, including two that are orbiting in the zone ‘between fire and ice’ that could sustain life, experts said.
‘We have found two planets in the habitable zone of another star and they are the best candidates we have found to date for habitable planets,’ said William Borucki, principal investigator for the Kepler mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
A planet that is in the habitable zone is ‘between the fire and ice where a planet could have liquid water on its surface’, which is essential for sustaining life, he said.
If a planet is too close to its star, it will be ‘too hot and the oceans would boil’, and it if is too far from its star, the oceans would freeze, he explained.
‘Neither condition is conducive to the evolution of life,’ said Borucki.
The two potentially habitable planets, called Kepler-62e and 62-f, are around 1.5 times the size of Earth.
Planets that are close in size to Earth are more likely to be rocky, making the discovery of the two planets orbiting the star Kepler-62 a very exciting piece of news, the scientists said. ‘We only know of one star that hosts a planet with life, and that’s the sun,’ said scientists.
SPACE JUNKIES: MICE, LIZARDS, SNAILS ARE PART OF RUSSIAN SATELLITE CREW
Russia Friday launched a satellite with over 100 living creatures, including mice, lizards, snails as well as strains of bacteria, plants and seeds, as its ‘crew’, federal space agency Roscosmos said. The Soyuz-2.1A rocket-carrier, carrying the Bion-M vehicle, was launched at 2 p.m. Moscow time (1000 GMT) from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan, Xinhua reported. The rocket also placed six small communication satellites made in Germany, the US, and South Korea on a near-earth orbit at an average altitude of 575 km. The 6,300-kg Bion-M vehicle will return to Earth May 18 after over 70 experiments, Roscosmos said. Prior to the launch, scientists had to replace a group of male mice.
‘We have found two planets in the habitable zone of another star and they are the best candidates we have found to date for habitable planets,’ said William Borucki, principal investigator for the Kepler mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
A planet that is in the habitable zone is ‘between the fire and ice where a planet could have liquid water on its surface’, which is essential for sustaining life, he said.
If a planet is too close to its star, it will be ‘too hot and the oceans would boil’, and it if is too far from its star, the oceans would freeze, he explained.
‘Neither condition is conducive to the evolution of life,’ said Borucki.
The two potentially habitable planets, called Kepler-62e and 62-f, are around 1.5 times the size of Earth.
Planets that are close in size to Earth are more likely to be rocky, making the discovery of the two planets orbiting the star Kepler-62 a very exciting piece of news, the scientists said. ‘We only know of one star that hosts a planet with life, and that’s the sun,’ said scientists.
SPACE JUNKIES: MICE, LIZARDS, SNAILS ARE PART OF RUSSIAN SATELLITE CREW
Russia Friday launched a satellite with over 100 living creatures, including mice, lizards, snails as well as strains of bacteria, plants and seeds, as its ‘crew’, federal space agency Roscosmos said. The Soyuz-2.1A rocket-carrier, carrying the Bion-M vehicle, was launched at 2 p.m. Moscow time (1000 GMT) from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan, Xinhua reported. The rocket also placed six small communication satellites made in Germany, the US, and South Korea on a near-earth orbit at an average altitude of 575 km. The 6,300-kg Bion-M vehicle will return to Earth May 18 after over 70 experiments, Roscosmos said. Prior to the launch, scientists had to replace a group of male mice.