Thursday, July 23, 2015

Earth cousin found – BBC

Another “most Earth-like planets,” found in observations telescope NASA Kepler. It is reported that now looks like the planet Earth through 1 billion years. To fly to the planet, even the speed of light – more than a thousand years, so that the contact with the inhabitants of this planet, even if they are, in the near future is hardly possible.

Launched in 2009, the space telescope “Kepler” continues to make discoveries. July 23 NASA employees and their colleagues from around the world presented a new batch of data from an astronomical satellite that is currently running the basic mission, is engaged in a long time – 80 days – observations of individual stars in the mission K2.

At this time, using the “Kepler” for the first time in the history of space-based observations could find a planet that does not even journalists and the scientists have dubbed “Other Land”, or – a little less pathetic – “Cousin Earth».

In fact, it It is that astrophysicists were able to detect a planet that is very similar to ours, and that revolves around a star that resembles the sun. And it happened in the 20 th anniversary of the discovery of the first planet orbiting a star, like Earth (author of the discovery, the Swiss astronomer Michel Mayor, told “Gazeta.ru” of the work ).

The new planet, which orbits a star in the constellation Cygnus, the scientists dubbed Kepler-452b and told the public about it as follows: it is the smallest planet at the moment among the public who are in the so-called habitable zone – conditioned space area, where it is estimated that there may be conditions for the existence of Earth-like planets, which will be on him water in liquid form.

Astrophysics told that the diameter of the Kepler-452b is 60% larger than the Earth, the planet that can be attributed to a class of planets that are called “super-Earths.” At the same time the mass and composition of the new planet, scientists have not yet had time to calculate, adding that, most likely, it is rocky.

 The candidates for habitable planets: the horizontal axis shows zhnergiya obtained from the star and the vertical - the temperature of the star. Showing, in particular, Earth, Venus and Mars. The planet takes 452 closest to Earth position
Candidates for habitable planets: the horizontal axis shows zhnergiya obtained from the star and the vertical – the temperature of the star. Showing, in particular, Earth, Venus and Mars. The planet takes 452 Earth is closest to the position

NASA Ames / W. Stenzel

Due to the fact that Kepler-452b larger than Earth, around its star, he asks for 385 days, which is 5% longer than the revolution of the Earth around the sun. In addition, the new planet is 5% farther from its star, when compared to the distance from the Earth to the sun.

 Distribution of the candidates in the world according to the telescope Kepler. Showing orbital period in the Earth's days and the size of the planet in earth radii
Distribution of candidates for the planet according to the telescope Kepler. Showing orbital period in the Earth’s days and the size of the planet in earth radii

NASA / W. Stenzel

In this case, the age of the star – Kepler-452 – 6 billion years. It turns out that she is older than our Sun by as much as 1.5 billion years. Moreover, Kepler-452 20% brighter than the sun and has a diameter greater than the solar 10%.

However, to get into the system Kepler-452 and find out whether Kepler-452b liquid water, and perhaps even life, do not quickly succeed, because it is located at a distance of 1,400 light-years from Earth.

 The solar system compared with a system of 452
solar system compared with the system 452

NASA / JPL-CalTech / R. Hurt

Previous exoplanet resembling the Earth – Kepler-186f – was discovered in April 2014. That planet was quite a bit larger than Earth: the radius of the Earth’s total exceeds 10%. But the mass of the planet, scientists were not able to immediately assess. According to the calculations of astronomers, Kepler-186f is at the outer edge of the habitable zone, which could mean a risk of freezing of water located on it. However, the fact that the planet is somewhat larger than the Earth, gives us hope that Kepler-186f is thicker than Earth or Mars, the atmosphere, capable of retaining heat. They then took over a one-year break: apparently deciding that prior to the submission of a new “Earth-like planets” take some time.

Presentation of the planet Kepler-452 took place during a press conference at which scientists presented new an analysis of the data from the telescope, “Kepler.”

The researchers analyzed data obtained during the four years of the telescope “Kepler”, and made a new directory of candidates for the title of exoplanets. The updated catalog contains 500 space objects larger than the previous one, which was announced on the Press Conference on the “Kepler» . Earlier Telescope “Kepler” found 4175 exoplanet candidates for the title, but now they were joined by another 500 space objects. 12 of them are located in the habitable zone of its star.

Now catalog of exoplanets are 1934 object. Interestingly, Kepler452b there already introduced –pryamo Thursday.

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