| Author: Elpais.com.co | AFP
NASA announced Thursday the discovery of a planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a sun-like star that could support life and have some characteristics similar to Earth.
The planet, named Kepler-452b and qualified by NASA as “a cousin, largest and oldest of the Earth” by 1500 million years was found by the Kepler space telescope, during the mission of the same name, which is used by NASA to analyze changes in the intensity of the energy emitted by a star.
“The exoplanet, especially small, similar to Earth’s, belonged to the world of science fiction just 21 years ago. But today, after thousands of findings, Astronomers are about to discover something that people have dreamed for thousands of years: Another Earth, “said NASA
The Kepler-452b, on the right side of the screen, is compared by NASA with planet Earth, on the left.
Elpais.com.co l AFP
Jon Jenkins, head of analysis of data from the Kepler mission, said the planet It is 60% larger than Earth, so the surface gravity would be twice that of our planet.
In addition, NASA said, that star It is 4% larger than the Sun and 10% brighter. There are also many opportunities to be rocky, has a thick atmosphere and may have liquid water to facilitate the existence of life. If the planet is rocky -and scientists have reason to believe that it is – then it could be in the midst of a terrible scenario, as the heat of his dying star would be evaporating lakes and oceans.
“If Kepler 542b is indeed a rocky planet, its location relative to its star could mean that going through the worst phase of greenhouse its climate history,” he said Doug Caldwell, Kepler mission scientist at the Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), an institute searching for extraterrestrial life.
“The growing power of your aged sun could be heating the surface and evaporating any ocean there. The water vapor may be he lost the planet forever,” he added.
In conclusion, “Kepler 452b may now be experiencing what we suffer here on Earth 1,000 million years, as the sun ages and becomes more brilliant.”
According to one scientist who is part of this mission, so far Kepler-452b is the planet most similar to Earth. Even the rotation around its star is given in 385 days.
planetary Catalog
The Kepler mission was launched in 2009 with the aim of search for exoplanets say –it planets outside our solar system – especially those that are the size of Earth or smaller
On Thursday, NASA released the latest catalog of exoplanets candidates and added more. 500 possible new planets to 4,175 has already found the space telescope. “This catalog contains our first analysis of all data from Kepler, as well as a atomatizada evaluation of these results,” said Jeffrey Coughlin, scientist at the Seti Institute.
The new catalog includes 12 candidates whose diameter is smaller twice the diameter of Earth and orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. Of these 12 new candidates, Kepler 452b “is the first that is confirmed as a planet,” according to NASA.
Kepler identifies potential planets looking opaque points in the brightness of stars, which could be caused by the passage of a planet between the star and the telescope. The space telescope was damaged by mid-2013, when two of its gyroscopes stopped working. Exoplanets mentioned last Thursday by NASA had been observed before Kepler fail.
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