On February 22, in a conference held by NASA, the space organization announced that a new system of Exoplanets could hold potential life. The potential Earth-sized planets revolve around an ‘ultra-cool’ dwarf sun around 40 light years away.
A system of seven planets has been found and NASA has named the system of planets after the ‘Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope,’ which is located in Chile; hence the name of the system is TRAPPIST-1.
The ultra-cool dwarf sun means that the star has lower mass than our sun and are relatively cooler. This means that even if planets are orbiting close to the dwarf sun, it is possible that cool liquid water may be able to survive on these planets.
According to NASA, with the help of big telescopes like Spitzer, the existence of two of these planets was confirmed in 2016. But later on five more planets were discovered by Spitzer.
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said, “This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life. ‘Are we alone?’ is a top science priority question and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal.”
This discovery of new set of planets holds the record for the greatest number of habitable-zone planets around a single star outside our solar system.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
