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Science

NASA Reveals Details About Habitable Worlds Observatory

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An artist’s concept of LUVOIR, a 15-meter telescope that was an early NASA concept for a future space telescope. The newly described Habitable Worlds Telescope wouldn’t be quite as large as this.

NASA officials disclosed information about a planned next-generation space telescope, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, during a recent session of the American Astronomical Society,

In the session, Mark Clampin, the Astrophysics Division Director NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, offered a few details about the telescope, which could be operational in the early 2040s.

The need for such an observatory is outlined in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s decadal survey on astronomy and astrophysics, a report assembled by hundreds of industry experts that serves as a reference document for the fields’ future goals.

One of the key findings of the most recent decadal survey was the necessity of finding habitable worlds beyond our own, using a telescope tailored specifically for such a purpose. The report suggested an $11 billion observatory—one with a 6-meter telescope that would take in light at optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelengths. (Hubble Space Telescope sees mostly in optical and ultraviolet light, while the more recently launched Webb Space Telescope images at mid-infrared and near-infrared wavelengths.)

The authors of the decadal survey suggested the Habitable Worlds Observatory as the first in a new Great Observatories program; basically, the linchpin in the next generation of 21st-century space telescopes. As Science reported, the decadal report’s suggestion of an exoplanet-focused space telescope falls somewhere between two older NASA proposals, telescope concepts named HabEx and LUVOIR.

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Exoplanets are found with regularity; it’s finding worlds with conditions that can host life as we know it that’s tricky. Webb has spotted exoplanets and deduced aspects of their atmospheric chemistry, and other telescopes (even planned ones, like the Roman Space Telescope) are turning their gaze toward these alien worlds.

Unlike other telescopes—both operational and those still on the drawing board—the planned Habitable Worlds Observatory would look specifically for so-called Goldilocks planets, worlds with conditions that could foster life.

The search for extraterrestrial life is a relentless goal of NASA. The Perseverance rover on Mars is collecting rock samples on Mars to learn, among other things, whether there’s any evidence for ancient microbial life in a region of the planet that once was a flowing river delta. (An environment, it’s important to note, that scientists believe was similar to that where Earth’s first known life materialized.)

Beyond Mars, scientists harbor hope that future probes can poke around for signs of life in the subsurface ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa or the methane sea on Saturn’s moon Titan.

But those are just venues—and hostile ones, compared to Earth—within our solar system. Missions like TESS and the Kepler Space Telescope have detected thousands of exoplanets, but the fraction that are Earth-like is vanishingly small.

Like the Webb telescope, the future observatory will be located at L2, a region of space one million miles from Earth that allows objects to remain in position with relatively little fuel burn. (By saving fuel, the missions’ lifespans are prolonged.)

As reported by Science, Clampin said that the Habitable Worlds Observatory would be designed for maintenance and upgrades, which Webb is not. That could make the next observatory a more permanent presence in NASA’s menagerie of space telescopes.

Hubble was famously serviced by humans in low-Earth orbit multiple times, due to a number of mechanical snafus and issues that have arisen over the telescope’s 32-year tenure in space.

The Habitable Worlds Observatory repairs and upgrades (which would take place a million miles from Earth—a little far for human repairs) would be done robotically, more in the style of a Star Wars droid than a hand from the IT department.

Space News reported that NASA will imminently begin seeking out nominations for people to join the Science, Technology, Architecture Review Team (START) for the new observatory. The first phase of the observatory’s development is slated for 2029.

In November, Clampin told a House subcommittee that the Webb telescope had suffered 14 strikes from micrometeoroids—very small bits of fast-traveling space rock that can damage the telescope’s mirrors. Clampin said the NASA team was “making some operational changes to make sure we avoid any future impacts,” and the telescope was slightly repositioned to reduce the risk of future strikes.

One of the telescope’s mirror segments was damaged by a micrometeoroid strike, but an analysis by the team found the telescope “should meet its optical performance requirements for many years.”

Of paramount importance to the astronomical community is that the budget and timeline of the new observatory stay on track. The Webb project was years late and way over budget. Space News reports that some scientists are calling for an expedited timeline that could see the Habitable Worlds Observatory launch by 2035.

The ball is well and truly rolling on the telescopes of the future. The question is how Sisyphean the roll of the ball will be.

More: Webb Telescope Spots Ancient Galaxy Built Like the Milky Way

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Science

NASA Just Discovered a Rare Earth-Sized Planet in a Habitable Zone : ScienceAlert

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When it comes to finding life outside of our Solar System, planets that closely resemble Earth seem like a good place to start. We can now welcome celestial object TOI 700 e to that group of promising leads.

TOI 700 e has been confirmed orbiting inside the habitable zone of its star, TOI 700. That’s the region of space where significant quantities of water on its surface would be at a temperature suitable for a liquid form. Too warm for a blanket of ice, yet still cool enough for vapor to condense, these kinds of planets are considered ‘just right’ for life as we know it.

We can thank NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, for finding TOI 700 e, and for giving it its name (TOI means TESS Object of Interest). It’s the second planet in the habitable zone in this system, joining TOI 700 d that was spotted in 2020.

Illustration showing TOI 700 e in the foreground and TOI 700 d off in the distance. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt)

“This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” says planetary scientist Emily Gilbert, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.

“That makes the TOI 700 system an exciting prospect for additional follow up. Planet e is about 10 percent smaller than planet d, so the system also shows how additional TESS observations help us find smaller and smaller worlds.”

TOI 700 is a small, cool star (known as an M dwarf star), located around 100 light-years away from us in the Dorado constellation. These stars are nowhere near as big or as hot as our own Sun, so planets need to be closer to them for conditions to be warm enough for water to avoid freezing.

As for TOI 700 e, it’s believed to be 95 percent the size of Earth and mainly rocky. It sits in the ‘optimistic’ habitable zone – a zone where water may have existed at some point in time. TOI 700 d is in the narrower ‘conservative’ habitable zone, which is where astronomers think liquid water might exist for the majority of a planet’s existence.

Telescopes see these exoplanets (planets outside our Solar System) as regular blips in the light of their parent stars as they pass in front of it, in what’s known as a transit. With more surface blocking the star’s light, larger planets present easier opportunities to be seen than small, rocky worlds, making Earth-like discoveries like this one a rare treat.

TOI 700 e takes 28 days to do a single orbit, whereas TOI 700 d – which is a little further out than its neighbor – takes 37 days. As TOI 700 e is smaller than TOI 700 d, it took more data to confirm the silhouette really did represent a new planet.

“If the star was a little closer or the planet a little bigger, we might have been able to spot TOI 700 e in the first year of TESS data,” says astrophysicist Ben Hord from the University of Maryland. “But the signal was so faint that we needed the additional year of transit observations to identify it.”

TESS is monitoring around 100 million stars, and so any way we can find to narrow down the search for life is going to be useful. Finding exoplanets in their respective habitable zones is one of the best ways we’ve got of doing that.

Both TOI 700 e and TOI 700 d are thought to be tidally locked: in other words, one side of the planet is always facing its star (in the same way that the same side of the Moon is always visible from Earth). Having one side of a planet constantly baking in the sunlight does reduce the likelihood of complex life getting off to a smooth start, admittedly.

Even if these ‘just right’ planets aren’t exactly perfect for life, they do tell us a thing or two about finding solar systems that might be better suited for it. By studying star systems like the one we’re in, astronomers can also better understand the evolution of our home and how neighboring planets came to their current orbits.

“Even with more than 5,000 exoplanets discovered to date, TOI 700 e is a key example that we have a lot more to learn,” says astronomer Joey Rodriguez from Michigan State University.

The research has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, and is currently available to view on arXiv.

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Science

NASA Planet Hunter Discovers Second Habitable, Earth-Size World in TOI 700 System

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Newly discovered Earth-size planet TOI 700 e orbits within the habitable zone of its star in this illustration. Its Earth-size sibling, TOI 700 d, can be seen in the distance. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt

The newly discovered planet and its Earth-size sibling are both in the habitable zone, where liquid water could potentially exist on their surfaces.

Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet’s surface. The world is 95% Earth’s size and likely rocky.

Astronomers previously discovered three exoplanets in this system, called TOI 700 b, c, and d. Planet d also orbits in the habitable zone. But scientists needed an additional year of


Watch to learn about TOI 700 e, a newly discovered Earth-size planet with an Earth-size sibling. Credit:

TOI 700 is a small, cool M dwarf star located around 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. In 2020, Gilbert and others announced the discovery of the Earth-size, habitable-zone planet d, which is on a 37-day orbit, along with two other worlds.

The innermost planet, TOI 700 b, is about 90% Earth’s size and orbits the star every 10 days. TOI 700 c is over 2.5 times bigger than Earth and completes an orbit every 16 days. The exoplanets are probably tidally locked, which means they spin only once per orbit such that one side always faces the star, just as one side of the Moon is always turned toward Earth.

TESS monitors large swaths of the sky, called sectors, for approximately 27 days at a time. These long stares allow the satellite to track changes in stellar brightness caused by an exoplanet crossing in front of its star from our perspective, an event called a transit. The mission used this strategy to observe the southern sky starting in 2018, before turning to the northern sky. In 2020, it returned to the southern sky for additional observations. The extra year of data allowed the team to refine the original planet sizes, which are about 10% smaller than the initial calculations.

Illustration of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

“If the star was a little closer or the planet a little bigger, we might have been able to spot TOI 700 e in the first year of TESS data,” said Ben Hord, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park and a graduate researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But the signal was so faint that we needed the additional year of transit observations to identify it.”

TOI 700 e, which may also be tidally locked, takes 28 days to orbit its star, placing planet e between planets c and d in the so-called optimistic habitable zone.

Scientists define the optimistic habitable zone as the range of distances from a star where liquid surface water could be present at some point in a planet’s history. This area extends to either side of the conservative habitable zone, the range where researchers hypothesize liquid water could exist over most of the planet’s lifetime. TOI 700 d orbits in this region.

Finding other systems with Earth-size worlds in this region helps planetary scientists learn more about the history of our own solar system.

Follow-up study of the TOI 700 system with space- and ground-based observatories is ongoing, Gilbert said, and may yield further insights into this rare system.

“TESS just completed its second year of northern sky observations,” said Allison Youngblood, a research astrophysicist and the TESS deputy project scientist at Goddard. “We’re looking forward to the other exciting discoveries hidden in the mission’s treasure trove of data.”

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts;



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Science

NASA satellite discovers second Earth-sized planet in habitable zone

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Scientists from NASA announced Tuesday that they discovered an Earth-size planet orbiting its star’s habitable zone.

Called TOI 700 e, the planet is part of the TOI 700 system and is 95% the Earth’s size and likely rocky, according to NASA, which used data from its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

“This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California who led the work, said in a statement on NASA’s website.

NASA previously discovered three planets in the same system, called TOI 700 b, c and d. Planet d is also in the habitable zone of the star, NASA said.

NASA’s TESS discovers planetary system’s second sarth-size world seen in a NASA illustration.

NASA

“Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so the system also shows how additional TESS observations help us find smaller and smaller worlds,” Gilbert said.

Paul Hertz, a senior advisor to the Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, said in 2020 that “TESS was designed and launched specifically to find Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby stars.”

TOI 700 e takes 28 days to orbit its star called TOI 700, a small red dwarf star located around 100 light-years from Earth.

In 2020, a New York teenager interning at NASA discovered a planet 6.9 times larger than Earth that orbited two stars, what scientists call a circumbinary planet.

NASA said the Wolf Cukier’s discovery was rare because circumbinary planets, which are usually difficult to find and scientists can only detect these planets during a transit event, when one of the suns shows a decrease in brightness.

ABC News’ Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.

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Science

Second potentially habitable Earth-size planet found orbiting nearby star

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CNN
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A NASA mission has spotted an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting a small star about 100 light-years away.

The planet, named TOI 700 e, is likely rocky and 95% the size of our world. The celestial body is the fourth planet to be detected orbiting the small, cool M dwarf star TOI 700. All of the exoplanets were found by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS mission.

Another planet in the system, discovered in 2020 and named TOI 700 d, is also the size of Earth. Both of these exoplanets exist in their star’s habitable zone, or just the right distance from the star that liquid water might potentially exist on their surfaces. The potential for liquid water suggests that the planets themselves could be, or might once have been, habitable for life.

The discovery of the fourth planet was announced Tuesday at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, and a study about the exoplanet has been accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” said lead study author Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.

“That makes the TOI 700 system an exciting prospect for additional follow-up. Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so the system also shows how additional TESS observations help us find smaller and smaller worlds.”

Small, cool M dwarf stars like TOI 700 are common in the universe, and many have been found to host exoplanets in recent years, like the TRAPPIST-1 system and its seven exoplanets that the James Webb Space Telescope will observe.

Closest to the star is TOI 700 b, which is 90% of Earth’s size and completes one rapid orbit around the star every 10 Earth days. Then there’s TOI 700 c, which is 2.5 times bigger than our planet and finishes one orbit around the star every 16 days. These planets are both likely tidally locked, meaning they always show the same side to the star — much like how the same side of the moon always faces Earth.

The two exoplanets in the habitable zone of the star, planets d and e, have longer orbits of 37 days and 28 days, respectively, because they’re a little more distant from the star. The newly announced planet e is actually located between planets c and d.

The TESS mission, launched in 2018, monitors large portions of the night sky for 27 days at a time, staring at the brightest stars and tracking their changes in brightness. These dips in luminosity indicate orbiting planets as they pass in front of their stars, called transits. The mission began observing the southern sky in 2018, then turned to the northern sky. In 2020, the mission refocused on the southern sky again for additional observations, revealing the fourth planet in the TOI 700 system.

“If the star was a little closer or the planet a little bigger, we might have been able to spot TOI 700 e in the first year of TESS data,” said study coauthor Ben Hord, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a graduate researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement. “But the signal was so faint that we needed the additional year of transit observations to identify it.”

While the researchers use other space and ground-based observatories to conduct follow-up observations of the intriguing planetary system, more TESS data is pouring in.

“TESS just completed its second year of northern sky observations,” said Allison Youngblood, a research astrophysicist and the TESS deputy project scientist at Goddard. “We’re looking forward to the other exciting discoveries hidden in the mission’s treasure trove of data.”

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Potentially habitable Earth-like worlds found in our backyard

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Astronomers have discovered two potentially habitable worlds orbiting a red dwarf star in our cosmic backyard. The extra-solar planets or “exoplanets” are located just 16 light-years away and have masses similar to that of our planet. 

They are located in the ‘habitable zone’ of their star, GJ 1002, defined as the shell around a star that is neither too hot nor too cold to support liquid water, a vital ingredient for life.

“Nature seems bent on showing us that Earth-like planets are very common,” study author Alejandro Suárez Mascareño of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC)  said in a statement (opens in new tab). “With these two we now know seven in planetary systems quite near to the sun.”

Related: Astronomers discover strange twin alien planets might be water worlds

Because liquid water is essential for life to exist, planets in habitable zones are the focus of our search for life elsewhere in the universe, though just being in a habitable zone is no guarantee of being able to support life. For example, in the solar system both Venus and Mars are in the sun’s habitable zone yet neither could currently support life.

Because GJ 1002 is a relatively cool red dwarf, its habitable zone  —  and these two new exoplanets  —  are much closer to it than Earth is to the sun. The innermost planet, designated GJ 1002b, takes just around 10 days to orbit the star while the outer planet, GJ 1002c, completes an orbit in 21 days.

Infographic comparing the relative distance between the discovered planets and their star with the inner planets of the Solar System. The region marked in green represents the habitable zone of the two planetary systems. (Image credit: Design: Alejandro Suárez Mascareño (IAC). Planets of the Solar System: NASA)

“GJ 1002 is a red dwarf star, with barely one-eighth the mass of the sun,” study co-author and IAC researcher, Vera María Passegger, said in the statement. “It is quite a cool, faint star. This means that its habitability zone is very close to the star.”

The proximity of both planets to Earth means that they could be excellent targets for astronomers aiming to study the atmospheres of Earth-like worlds outside the solar system. 

The exoplanets were discovered as the result of a collaboration between the European Southern Observatory (ESO) instrument ESPRESSO (Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations) installed at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Atacama desert region of Northern Chile, and CARMENES (Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exoearths with Near-infrared and optical Échelle Spectrographs) at the Calar Alto Observatory in Andalucía, Southern Spain.

The two instruments observed the planets’ parent star during two separate periods, CARMENES studied GJ 1002 between 2017 and 2019, while ESPRESSO collected data from the red dwarf between 2019 and 2021.

CARMENES’ sensitivity over a wide range of near-infrared wavelengths makes it well-suited to detecting variations in the velocities of stars that can indicate orbiting planets. 

“Because of its low temperature the visible light from GJ 1002 is too faint to measure its variations in velocity with the majority of spectrographs” a researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), Ignasi Ribas, explained.

While ESPRESSO and the light-gathering power of the VLT allowed astronomers to make observations of the system that wouldn’t have been possible with any other Earth-based telescope, it was the combination of these two powerful instruments that delivered results which in isolation would have struggled to achieve and lead to the discovery of these exoplanets.

“Either of the two groups would have had many difficulties if they had tackled this work independently,” concluded Suárez Mascareño. “Jointly we have been able to get much further than we would have done acting independently.”

The astronomers now hope to use the ANDES spectrograph on the Extremely Large Telescope under construction in the atmosphere of GJ 1002c. 

The team’s research is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. (opens in new tab)

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Exoplanets: The search for habitable planets may have just narrowed

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CNN
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The hunt for planets that could harbor life may have just narrowed dramatically.

Scientists had long hoped and theorized that the most common type of star in our universe — called an M dwarf — could host nearby planets with atmospheres, potentially rich with carbon and perfect for the creation of life. But in a new study of a world orbiting an M dwarf 66 light-years from Earth, researchers found no indication such a planet could hold onto an atmosphere at all.

Without a carbon-rich atmosphere, it’s unlikely a planet would be hospitable to living things. Carbon molecules are, after all, considered the building blocks of life. And the findings don’t bode well for other types of planets orbiting M dwarfs, said study coauthor Michelle Hill, a planetary scientist and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside.

“The pressure from the star’s radiation is immense, enough to blow a planet’s atmosphere away,” Hill said in a post on the university’s website.

M dwarf stars are known to be volatile, sputtering out solar flares and raining radiation on nearby celestial bodies.

But for years, the hope had been that fairly large planets orbiting near M dwarfs could be in a Goldilocks environment, close enough to their small star to keep warm and large enough to cling onto its atmosphere.

The nearby M dwarf, however, could be too intense to keep the atmosphere intact, according to the new study, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A similar phenomenon happens in our solar system: Earth’s atmosphere also deteriorates because of outbursts from its nearby star, the sun. The difference is that Earth has enough volcanic activity and other gas-emitting activity to replace the atmospheric loss and make it barely detectable, according to the research.

However, the M dwarf planet examined in the study, GJ 1252b, “could have 700 times more carbon than Earth has, and it still wouldn’t have an atmosphere. It would build up initially, but then taper off and erode away,” said study coauthor and UC Riverside astrophysicist Stephen Kane, in a news release.

GJ 1252b orbits less than a million miles from its home star, called GJ_1252. The planet reaches sweltering daytime temperatures of up to 2,242 degrees Fahrenheit (1,228 degrees Celsius), the study found.

The existence of the planet was first suggested by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, mission. Then, astronomers ordered the nearly 17-year-old Spitzer Space Telescope to set its sights on the area in January 2020 — less than 10 days before Spitzer was deactivated forever.

The investigation into whether GJ 1252b had an atmosphere was led by astronomer Ian Crossfield at the University of Kansas and involved a collection of researchers from UC Riverside, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, the University of Maryland, Carnegie Institution for Science, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, McGill University, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Montreal.

They pored over the data produced by Spitzer, searching for emission signatures, or signs that a gaseous bubble could encase the planet. The telescope captured the planet as it passed behind its home star, allowing researchers to “look at the starlight as it’s passing through the atmosphere of the planet,” giving a “spectral signature of the atmosphere” — or lack thereof, Hill said.

Hill added that she wasn’t shocked to find no signs of an atmosphere, but she was disappointed. She’s looking for moons and planets in “habitable zones,” and the results made looking at worlds circling the ubiquitous M dwarf stars slightly less interesting.

Researchers hope to get even more clarity about these types of planets with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space telescope to date.

Webb will soon set its sights on the TRAPPIST-1 system, “which is also an M dwarf star with a bunch of rocky planets around it,” Hill noted.

“There’s a lot of hope that it will be able to tell us whether those planets have an atmosphere around them or not,” she added. “I guess the M dwarf enthusiasts are probably holding their breath right now to see whether we can tell whether there’s an atmosphere around those planets.”

There are, however, still plenty of interesting places to hunt for habitable worlds. Apart from looking to planets farther away from M dwarfs that could be more likely to retain an atmosphere, there are still roughly 1,000 sunlike stars relatively near Earth that could have their own planets circling within habitable zones, according to the UC Riverside post about the study.

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Super-Earths are bigger, more common and more habitable than Earth itself – and astronomers are discovering more of the billions they think are out there

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Astronomers think the most likely place to find life in the galaxy is on super-Earths, like Kepler-69c, seen in this artist’s rendering. (Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-CalTech)

This article was originally published at The Conversation. (opens in new tab) The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Astronomers now routinely discover planets orbiting stars outside of the solar system — they’re called exoplanets. But in summer 2022, teams working on NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite found a few particularly interesting planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars.

One planet is 30% larger than Earth (opens in new tab) and orbits its star in less than three days. The other is 70% larger than the Earth (opens in new tab) and might host a deep ocean. These two exoplanets are super-Earths — more massive than the Earth but smaller than ice giants like Uranus and Neptune.

I’m a professor of astronomy (opens in new tab) who studies galactic cores, distant galaxies, astrobiology (opens in new tab) and exoplanets. I closely follow the search for planets that might host life.

Earth is still the only place in the universe scientists know to be home to life. It would seem logical to focus the search for life on Earth clones — planets with properties close to Earth’s. But research has shown that the best chance astronomers have of finding life on another planet is likely to be on a super-Earth similar to the ones found recently.

Related: ‘We can find life outside the solar system in 25 years,’ researcher says

A super-Earth is any rocky planet that is bigger than Earth and smaller than Neptune. (Image credit: Aldaron, CC BY-SA)

Common and easy to find

Most super-Earths orbit cool dwarf stars, which are lower in mass and live much longer than the sun. There are hundreds of cool dwarf stars for every star like the Sun, and scientists have found super-Earths orbiting 40% of cool dwarfs (opens in new tab) they have looked at. Using that number, astronomers estimate that there are tens of billions (opens in new tab) of super-Earths in habitable zones where liquid water can exist in the Milky Way alone. Since all life on Earth uses water, water is thought to be critical for habitability.

Based on current projections, about a third of all exoplanets (opens in new tab) are super-Earths, making them the most common type of exoplanet in the Milky Way. The nearest is only 6 light-years away (opens in new tab) from Earth. You might even say that our solar system is unusual since it does not have a planet with a mass between that of Earth and Neptune.

Most exoplanets are discovered by looking for how they dim the light coming from their parent stars, so bigger planets are easier to find. (Image credit: Nikola Smolenski, CC BY-SA)

Another reason super-Earths are ideal targets in the search for life is that they’re much easier to detect and study (opens in new tab) than Earth-sized planets. There are two methods astronomers use to detect exoplanets. One looks for the gravitational effect of a planet on its parent star and the other looks for brief dimming of a star’s light as the planet passes in front of it. Both of these detection methods are easier with a bigger planet.

Super-Earths are super habitable

Over 300 years ago, German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz argued that Earth was the “best of all possible worlds (opens in new tab).” Leibniz’s argument was meant to address the question of why evil exists, but modern astrobiologists have explored a similar question by asking what makes a planet hospitable to life. It turns out that Earth is not the best of all possible worlds.

Due to Earth’s tectonic activity and changes in the brightness of the sun, the climate has veered over time from ocean-boiling hot to planetwide, deep-freeze cold. Earth has been uninhabitable for humans and other larger creatures for most of its 4.5-billion-year history. Simulations suggest the long-term habitability of Earth was not inevitable (opens in new tab), but was a matter of chance. Humans are literally lucky to be alive.

Researchers have come up with a list of the attributes (opens in new tab) that make a planet very conducive to life. Larger planets are more likely to be geologically active, a feature that scientists think would promote biological evolution (opens in new tab). So the most habitable planet would have roughly twice the mass of the Earth and be between 20% and 30% larger by volume. It would also have oceans that are shallow enough for light to stimulate life all the way to the seafloor and an average temperature of 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius). It would have an atmosphere thicker than the Earth’s that would act as an insulating blanket. Finally, such a planet would orbit a star older than the Sun to give life longer to develop, and it would have a strong magnetic field that protects against cosmic radiation (opens in new tab). Scientists think that these attributes combined will make a planet super habitable.

By definition, super-Earths have many of the attributes of a super habitable planet. To date, astronomers have discovered two dozen super-Earth exoplanets (opens in new tab) that are, if not the best of all possible worlds, theoretically more habitable than Earth.

Recently, there’s been an exciting addition to the inventory of habitable planets. Astronomers have started discovering exoplanets (opens in new tab) that have been ejected from their star systems (opens in new tab), and there could be billions of them (opens in new tab) roaming the Milky Way. If a super-Earth is ejected from its star system and has a dense atmosphere and watery surface, it could sustain life for tens of billions of years (opens in new tab), far longer than life on Earth could persist before the sun dies.

One of the newly discovered super-Earths, TOI-1452b, might be covered in a deep ocean and could be conducive to life. (Image credit: Benoit Gougeon, Université de Montréal, CC BY-ND)

Detecting life on super-Earths

To detect life on distant exoplanets, astronomers will look for biosignatures, byproducts of biology (opens in new tab) that are detectable in a planet’s atmosphere.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was designed before astronomers had discovered exoplanets, so the telescope is not optimized for exoplanet research. But it is able to do some of this science and is scheduled to target two potentially habitable super-Earths in its first year of operations. Another set of super-Earths with massive oceans discovered in the past few years, as well as the planets discovered this summer, are also compelling target (opens in new tab)s for James Webb.

But the best chances for finding signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres will come with the next generation of giant, ground-based telescopes: the 39-meter Extremely Large Telescope (opens in new tab), the Thirty Meter Telescope (opens in new tab) and the 25.4-meter Giant Magellan Telescope (opens in new tab). These telescopes are all under construction and set to start collecting data by the end of the decade.

Astronomers know that the ingredients for life are out there, but habitable does not mean inhabited. Until researchers find evidence of life elsewhere, it’s possible that life on Earth was a unique accident. While there are many reasons why a habitable world would not have signs of life, if, over the coming years, astronomers look at these super habitable super-Earths and find nothing, humanity may be forced to conclude that the universe is a lonely place.

Editor’s Note: The story has been updated to correct the size of the Giant Magellan Telescope.

This article is republished from The Conversation (opens in new tab) under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article (opens in new tab).

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Science

NASA Found A New Habitable Planet, Making MARS An Alternative

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The sad reality is that Earth is unlikely to be habitable forever. It is predicted that four billion years from now, the increase in Earth’s surface temperature will heat Earth’s surface enough to melt it. At that point, all life on Earth will be extinct. This might seem like such a faraway time, but just cause it won’t affect us directly, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care.

Everything we do now impacts the Earth and the lives of the generations that follow us. The way we’re treating Erath as it is is only accelerating the process and making it harder and harder for each generation.

Luckily, NASA announced that its technology has discovered a new type of planet in the habitable zone of a star that could provide liquid water. This is crucial as it could mean that the planet could make a new world for humans. This is what we know so far.Are you still searching for your life purpose? You won’t believe what the science of Numerology can reveal about you!

That’s right, the numerology of your birth date, regardless of what month you were born, can reveal surprising information about your personality.

Take a quick zodiac reading here to find out what the universe has to say about you right now.

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Science

NASA launches sounding rockets to look for habitable planets

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NASA will launch two sounding rockets from northern Australia during the first half of this month in order to help astronomers understand how starlight influences a planet’s atmosphere, the space agency reported this week.

The rockets will follow another two rockets that have already been launched as part of an exploration to understand how starlight influences a planet’s ability to support life.

The rocket launches will focus on two sun-like stars near our sun, Alpha Centauri A and B, because of their ultraviolet light which is essential for life in very specific amounts. Too much ultraviolet light can erode the atmosphere, NASA explained.

“Ultraviolet radiation from the Sun played a role in how Mars lost its atmosphere and how Venus turned into a dry, barren landscape,” said University of Colorado astronomer Brian Fleming.

“We need to understand the stars so that we can understand any planets we find there,” said fellow CU astronomer Kevin France.

NASA and SpaceX launch the first operational commercial crew mission (credit: REUTERS)

DEUCE and SISTINE missions

In order to help scientists better understand how starlight works in their mission to find other habitable planets, the two rocket missions, DEUCE (Dual-channel Extreme Ultraviolet Continuum Spectrograph) and SISTINE (Suborbital Imaging Spectrograph for Transition region Irradiance from Nearby Exoplanet host stars), will take measurements of the ultraviolet light emitted by Alpha Centauri A and B. 

The measurements will then be compared to the Sun, which is the only star in the galaxy for which astronomers have full ultraviolet measurements.

“Looking at Alpha Centauri will help us check if other stars like the Sun have the same radiation environment or if there are a range of environments,” France said.

“We have to go to Australia to study it because we can’t easily see these stars from the northern hemisphere to measure them.”

Astronomer Kevin France

“We’re excited to be able to launch important science missions from the Southern Hemisphere and see targets that we can’t from the United States,” said NASA’s Heliophysics Division director Nicky Fox.

A third mission was launched this week with the goal of studying X-rays emanating from the clouds of gases and particles in interstellar space.

NASA explained that while the space between stars in the night sky seems dark to the human eye, X-ray sky images show that there is actually a lot of activity there.



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