Research suggests there are planets in our galaxy suitable for …

An analysis of data sent by NASA’s Kepler space probe showed the enormity of the number of habitable exoplanets that could exist in our galaxy.

A group of astronomers set out ten years ago to look for an answer to one of the oldest questions that philosophers, scientists, priests, astronomers, mystics and the rest of mankind have not been able to find an answer to, namely: How many planets Earth-like in the universe? And if there are any, how many distant planets are habitable as we know them?

The instrument used by these scientists was the “Kepler” research spacecraft, launched in March 2009, on a 3 and a half year mission to observe 150,000 stars at one point in the sky in the “Milky Way” galaxy, and explored a light retreat in the starlight. Of an exoplanet passing in front of its original star.

When the science mission was launched in March 2009, William Buruki, an astronomer at NASA’s now retired Ames Research Center, said, “It’s not a journey to explore alien creatures, but rather to discover their worlds.” It was Dr. Buruki who dreamed of the project, and he spent two decades convincing NASA to do so.

When the spacecraft’s mission ended in 2018, it had discovered more than 4,000 potential worlds among those stars, but none of them showed even a single sign of life (though its study was difficult due to its enormous distances from ours. world). However, by extrapolation, this number indicates that there are billions of exoplanets in the Milky Way, but how many of these planets could be habitable?

After analyzing Kepler’s data for two years, a team of 44 astronomers, led by Steve Bryson of NASA’s Ames Research Center, reached what they said was the final answer, at least for now, and their research is been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Review.

The official goal of “Kepler” was to measure a number called “ETA-Earth”, which are some sun-like stars that have an Earth-sized body orbiting around them, in what are known as “golden locks.” “or habitable zone, where the climate is warm enough to keep the surface with liquid water.

The team estimated that at least a third, and possibly 90 percent, of stars comparable in mass and brightness to our sun contain rocks like Earth in their habitable regions, and this in the same event is not an easy thing, even if it looks like you. as such.

According to NASA estimates, there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, of which about 4 billion stars resemble the sun. And if only 7 percent of these stars had habitable planets – at the very least – there could be up to 300 million habitable Earth-like planets within the Milky Way alone.

“We want to be very wary of any surprises regarding nature and fitness to live in,” said Ravi Kumar Cobarabo, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, one of the report’s authors. So we are deliberately lowering the estimates. ”

According to astronomers, on average, the closest planet this way should be about 20 light-years away, and there should be 4 of them about 30 light-years from the sun.

In the same context, said Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California who has carried out the tasks of “Kepler” for most of his life, one of the authors of the new book: “It took 11 years from the launch of the research mission until publication, and this is the scientific result we have all been waiting for. This is why he chose (Kepler) to launch in December 2001. ”

The new result indicated that the galaxy has poor fertility or vitality, contrary to estimates from one of the preliminary analyzes of the “Kepler” data in 2013. The conclusion reached by Andrew Howard, Eric Pettigura and Geoffrey Marcy, who were not part of the “Kepler” team, is about a fifth of the sun-like stars host planets in their habitable regions.

And Dr Natalie Batalha said one of the improvements this time around was the addition of data from the European satellite “Gaia”, which measured the position and brightness of about a billion stars. Knowing this allowed Kepler’s scientists to draw the valid regions between these stars with greater accuracy.

Another improvement was represented in better addressing the statistics, although “the polls are incomplete in nature,” according to Dr Natalie, as it is not possible to track each star separately.

In the case of the “Kepler” research vehicle, this determination was dangerous, as the spacecraft’s guidance system failed before Kepler could complete his base survey, which limited him to the discovery of planets with orbital periods of no less than 700 days. , about twice the length of a year on a planet. Land.

In an email, David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said he was somewhat skeptical of the results, saying, “The mission (Kepler) has not discovered much (and possibly none) of the true isotopes of the Earth, or any The same, orbits in the same period and therefore receives the same amount of light, orbiting around sun-like stars.

For her part, Dr Natley said: “We still don’t have any planet candidates to be an exact isotope of the Earth, in terms of size, orbit or type of star.” Therefore, the astronomers had to extrapolate data from the planets they had already seen.

Although the planets observed by Kepler are close to the size of Earth – half to one and a half times the size of Earth – and are assumed to be rocky, no one knows what their details look like and if anything lives or can live on them, they are far from being able to study them in detail. Larger. So far we only know one planet that hosts life, our planet.

There were many opportunities and possibilities that the “Kepler” spacecraft had not encountered any until now. The measurement of the research vehicle “Kepler” refers only to the Earth and stars such as the sun, but in the galaxy there are more of these stars, but they are smaller and fainter stars, known as “red dwarfs”. A quarter to half of “red dwarfs” are also home to habitable planets, according to researcher Courtney Dressing, who now works at the University of California, although some astronomers fear that the radiation flares emanating from such stars will destroy any potential life there. It is worth noting that “red dwarf asteroids” were not included in the new analysis.

The “red dwarf asteroids” are relevant to the search for life, because the research vehicle “Kepler” carried the torch and missions on a spacecraft called the “Transiting Exploration Survey Satellite”, which was launched in 2018 to scan the sky looking for exoplanets hundreds of light years from Earth. . So far it has discovered 66 new exoplanets and has ranked more than 2,000 candidates for life.

In the same context, George Reeker, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the mission’s principal researcher, said in an email that most of these planets were expected to be orbiting “red dwarfs,” adding : “Because About three quarters of the stars in the solar quarter are dwarfs. This leaves a large area of ​​discovery for the new research vehicle (TRANSIT EXPLANTENGE) over the next decade.

Dr Batalha said that in the future young scientists could find a way to improve knowledge of the rocky planets interspersed with stars (AITA Earth). This would be the current standard. ”

The evaluation of “ITEarth” is an important factor unknown until now in a mathematical expression known as the “Drake equation” that astronomers use to estimate the number of technological civilizations that may exist in the galaxy and with which we might be able to communicate these civilizations by radio or any other means in the cosmic day.

The time has come to move on to the next factor in the “Drake equation” for extraterrestrial civilizations, which is that tiny fraction of these worlds on which life appeared. The search for even a single clay mold on some strange rocks will revolutionize biology, and this is the blueprint for the next half century as humans continue to scale the universe on a never-ending journey to end our cosmic unity.

– The New York Times report