The number of new confirmed exoplanets – planets located outside our own solar system – continues to grow at an impressive rate.
A massive amount of data is collected by space-based telescopes, which has to then be analysed and verified by astronomers. In the largest single announcement yet, NASA scientists have released information on 1,284 new verified planets, pared down from 4,302 potential candidates. When only decades ago there was not a single verified exoplanet, that number becomes staggering.
This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets identified by the Kepler space telescope. And with every new verified planet identified, the odds of identifying a true Earth-analogue increase.
Before Kepler was launched, astronomers had no idea how common planets really were. Now it is thought that there are likely to be more planets than stars. When you realise there are billions of galaxies, each with millions of stars, that’s a lot of planets! Even if the chance of life was extremely low, the likelihood of life, possibly even intelligent life out there somewhere starts to look good.
Missions like Kepler, combined with new technologies for getting actual pictures, spectrographic analysis and thermal maps of exoplanets (check out this post on capturing planetary snapshots), all point to some very exciting discoveries in the not-so-distant future.
Of the newly identified Kepler planets, around 550 could be Earth-like rocky planets. Nine of these orbit in their sun’s habitable zone, now making a total of 21 confirmed exoplanets in the so-called ‘goldilocks’ zone where liquid water can exit on the planet’s surface, allowing the potential for the formation of life as we know it. Two of these habitable zone planets are in the Tau Ceti system (see here). The potential for life on one of these planets is explored in my novel The Tau Ceti Diversion, due to be launched on September 1st 2016! Read more about what happens in the story here!
Kepler truly is the workhorse of planet-finding. Of the 3.200 exoplanets identified to date, more than 2,325 of these were discovered by Kepler. Launched in March 2009, Kepler spent four years monitoring the same patch of sky – some 150,000 stars – watching for the telltale tip in a star’s brightness that indicates a transiting planet.
Let’s hope that Kepler, and other missions like it, continue to increase our knowledge of exoplanets far into the future.
