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Harianjogja.com, JAKARTA – The US Space Agency has stated that there are 300 million planets in our galaxy that are habitable.
The US space agency’s Kepler Space Telescope spent nine years on a planet-hunting mission, successfully identifying thousands of exoplanets in our galaxy before running out of fuel in 2018.
So, scientists from all over the world have been looking at Kepler’s data for years and thought they had found the answer. According to research published in The Astronomical Journal, there are approximately 300 million potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy, which means rocky planets that have liquid water on their surface.
That figure is a rough estimate on the conservative side and “there could be a lot more,” NASA said in a news release. Some of these planets may be close enough to be considered “interstellar neighbors” – the closest being about 20 light-years away.
“Kepler told us there are billions of planets, but we now know that most of them are likely rocky and habitable,” said NASA researcher and lead author Steve Bryson.
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“Although these results are far from definitive and water on the planet’s surface is only one of many factors that support life, it is interesting that we have calculated that this world is general with great confidence and accuracy.”
The study is a global collaboration between NASA scientists working on the Kepler mission and researchers from international agencies from Brazil to Denmark.
According to NASA estimates, there are 100 to 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Every star in the sky probably has at least one planet, which means there are probably trillions of planets out there, of which we have only found and confirmed a few thousand.
There are many factors that influence whether a planet can support life, including its atmosphere and chemical composition. But to narrow down the trillions, the researchers in this study focused on a few basic requirements.
What makes a planet potentially habitable?
They are looking for stars similar in age and temperature to our Sun, so they won’t be too hot or active. They also looked for exoplanets with a similar radius to Earth and selected exoplanets that were most likely rocky.
They also consider the distance of each planet from its star: too close and the heat can evaporate the water, too far and the water can freeze.
A habitable planet must be in the “right” zone, or so-called Goldilocks zone, to support liquid water on its surface.
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Previous estimates of the number of habitable planets did not reflect how the star’s temperature and energy might be absorbed by its planets, a NASA statement said. But this time around, the scientists were able to incorporate temperature into their analyzes, thanks to additional data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which mapped a three-dimensional map of our galaxy.
“We’ve always known how to define habitability only in terms of the planet’s physical distance from the star, so it’s not too hot or cold, which makes us a lot of guesswork,” NASA scientist and study author Ravi Kopparapu said in a statement. .
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“Gaia’s star data allows us to see the planet and its stars in a whole new way.”
After calculating these factors, the researchers used a conservative estimate that 7% of Sun-like stars could host a habitable world. But the figure can reach 75%, scientists say.
NASA says it and other space agencies will continue to fine-tune forecasts in future research, which will help shape plans for the next phase of exoplanet and telescopic discovery. Currently, NASA’s TESS mission is the newest planet hunter in search of exoplanets.
Source: Bisnis.com
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