Five more exoplanets found in Milky Way, but no Earth twin

Mon, 04 Jan 2010

Washington - NASA scientists said Monday they have identified another five planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. But none of them appears to be the long sought after Earth-twin that could support life the way the home planet does, Kepler telescope specialists said at a news conference in Washington.

The data came from the Kepler telescope, which was launched in March into a wide orbit around the sun. In addition to the five newly confirmed planets, Kepler has delivered data on another 125 or so space bodies that have not yet been analyzed to determine if they are actually planets circling other suns, the astronomers said.

William Borucki, the lead scientist for the telescope, said the five new "exoplanets," as they are called, are orbiting "quite close to their stars" and are "quite hot."

"The planets we found are all hotter than molten lava ... they all glow with their temperatures," he said. "Certainly no place to look for life."

Because of their low density and fast orbits - 2.3-to-4.9-day orbits - the five planets in fact represent "the first of a new breed," one of his colleagues said.

Borucki was excited that the five planets were found in data from the first six weeks and have been confirmed by ground-based telescopes. That means the 590-million-dollar Kepler program is delivering accurate clear pictures from outer space, he said.

In August, Kepler was able to pick out the exoplanet HAT-P-7b, a body previously identified by Earth-bound telescopes. Kepler for the first time was able to measure the amount of light being emitted by the planet itself.

Scientists hope the three-and-a-half-year Kepler mission will answer the question: "Are we alone in the universe?"

It "could tell us that we have lots of neighbors or that we are perhaps the only one," researcher Ed Weiler said in March.

Since 1995, more than 340 planets have been found outside our solar system, but they have been large, gaseous planets, like Jupiter, which tend to be closer to their stars and easier to spot because of their size.

Planets like Earth, which could support life, can exist only in a small "habitable zone" within a certain distance from their sun. They are also harder to spot because they are smaller and denser.

Kepler carries the most advanced cameras ever used in space, focusing them on a small swatch of the galaxy - some 100,000 to 150,000 stars -deemed most likely to have orbiting planets. Data from the cameras is used to find planets by looking for distortions in the light being emitted as an orbiting planet crosses in front of the star.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/302073,five-more-exoplanets-found-in-milky-way-but-no-earth-twin.html.