A Review of Lee Billings' 'Do 3 Habitable Super-Earths Really Orbit a Nearby Star?'

The possibility of life beyond Earth is a tantalizing idea long prompting our species to wonder if there are other worlds where life exists. As space technology advances, the chances of finding life on other planets are now greater than ever. With new technologies such as satellites and solar panels, scientists are able to expand their exploration farther into our solar system. In 1995, an astronomer named Michel Mayor together with Didier Queloz discovered 51 Pegasi b. This was truly an incredible discovery that rocked the science community. Pledges b, a wobbling star the size of our sun, was slowly approaching, and according to Mayor’s

The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to: 1) Determine the abundance of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars; 2) Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets; 3) Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems; 4) Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets; 5) Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques; 6) Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.

it was discovered that there are other planets like Earth out there that are able to accommodate life forms like our planet. And it is highly unlikely that we are the only living things out there in the big universe

First thing I noticed when I started doing the research for this paper was how poorly the definition was developed, I saw many flaws that were resolved in the new definition by radon and an team of planetary scientists.

The topic of finding life on another planet, or seeing if we are the only ones in our Universe has been a mystery to us since the beginning of time. One of the closest findings NASA has found to this topic was exoplanets. Exoplanet is defined as a planet that orbits a star outside the solar system. NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope is the main telescope used to search for exoplanets that have similar features to Earth, and habitability on these exoplanets. NASA has found over 2,000 exoplanets so far, and out of those, there are only about eight exoplanets that seem to have a possibility on being a habitable exoplanets. Among these eight, Kepler 62f seems to be the most plausible.

Currently, there is only one planet we know of to host life, and that is our home planet Earth. The question remains as to what is exactly needed for a planet to be considered habitable, but scientists have developed a handful of criteria to help distinguish what planets could be “just right” for life. The ongoing search for possible habitable planets has produced many remarkable findings but nothing quite as extraordinary as the discovery of the system Trappist-1. According to nasa.gov, it is the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star, and it meets the criteria to possibly sustain life (“NASA Telescope Reveals” p.1). This discovery poses a likely answer to the question “are we alone” and drives our search for finding out more about what is out there.

On 2 August 2016, it was announced that an Earth-like planet had been found orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System. The planet named Proxima B is 4.85 billion years old, which is older than our 4.6 billion year old Sun. It sits a little over 4 light years away from Earth, which speaking in astronomical terms is right under our nose. While the discovery of exoplanets like Proxima B are driven by the same sense of curiosity the ancient Babylonians and Greeks had, sophisticated instruments have been used to discover these worlds. For more than 15 years, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile have used the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) and the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) to hunt for such planets. These instruments detect wobbles in a star’s movement caused by gravitational tugs of the orbiting planets that they’re searching for. Data collated from UVES and HARPS from the last 16 years allowed astronomers to confirm the finding. While we no longer look towards planets like these to tell our fortune, Proxima B represents a possible future for our civilisation. Its discovery has excited astronomers for its striking similarities to Earth, most notably the fact that it circles Proxima Centauri’s habitable zone: the range of distances ideal for liquid water to form. Coupled with its rocky composition, the potential

We are often presented with useful information in the search for new information, and here it comes in the form of two research papers. They are: ‘HD 219134b: A transiting rocky planet in a multi-planet system at 6.5 pc from the Sun’ by F. Motalebi et al. and ‘An Earth-size planet with an Earth-like density’ by F. Pepe et al. Both papers provide research findings on two close-proximity exoplanets around their respective host stars, with the main focus of

NASA Confirms Planet Discovery Only 21 Light Year Away; Comments on Kepler 452b: 'So What Else Is New?'

To begin with, there is more than one sun out there in space, and a sun can contain about one million planets in space. Scientists have discovered about one thousand planets orbiting distant stars. They have much more to discover! There is a big possibility that in one of those planets life could exist. Another big clue that scientist have discovered is that there are many galaxies in space and we live in one. The galaxy that Earth is located at is called the Milky Way Galaxy. A galaxy can contain many planets just like our galaxy can contains over billions of planets.

Earth may not be the only planet harboring life. Beyond our solar system, there are planets with similar and differing characteristics from Earth. These planets orbit stars other than our sun and are called ‘Exoplanets.’ The first confirmed exoplanet was discovered on January 9th, 1992. As of early 2018, there have been 3,705 exoplanets found and confirmed. Scientific evidence has proven the common existence of exoplanets by observing the planet’s transit in front of the star. As the planet travels between the telescope and its star, the light from the star dims, allowing scientists to determine the size of the planet. Scientists are also able to determine the distance between a star and a planet based on how long it takes the planet to orbit its star. One of these possibly habitable planet is Gliese

From the 14 Grand Challenges listed by the NAE, the most important one, I believe, is shifting to a focus on engineering the tools of scientific discovery. It is true that while engineers create the world, scientists discover the one we have now. Why separate the two? By combining the Sciences and Engineering, we are set to discover so much more than we ever thought ourselves capable of. This has already been proven with virtually every scientific discovery that has been made true through the form of some complex apparatus, but this is further proven through this year’s TRAPPIST telescope discovery of the seven exoplanets found orbiting around a single star. While this discovery was a huge achievement for scientists, this would not have been

The field of exoplanets is transitioning from an age of discovery into an era of planetary characterization. In the last decade, the Kepler spacecraft revealed that planets are ubiquitous within the galaxy, and over the coming years, TESS will find hundreds of nearby terrestrial planets. A primary NASA goal in astrophysics from the Science Mission Directorate is to “search for life on planets around other stars.” To achieve this, the properties of transiting candidate planets must be well understood to assess potential habitability. In particular, the planetary radii derived from the light curves of wide-field surveys are significantly underestimated. For Kepler, by a factor of 1.5 on average (Ciardi et al. 2015). High-resolution imaging

Using Subaru, one of the world’s largest telescopes located in Hawaii, the team and other astronomers hope to pick up the planet within the next five years. If Planet X is truly out there, they should also be able to find more data in other telltale orbits. All these findings, recently published in The Astronomical Journal, have sparked both caution and excitement in the scientific community. As taken from a statement made to National Geographic, Greg Laughlin of the University of California says, “If there’s going to be another planet in the solar system, I think this is it. It would be quite extraordinary if we had one. Fingers crossed. It would be

The first exoplanet found, Peg 51 b, challenged the then present theory of giant planet formation. Models of giant planet formation stated that Jupiter-like planets form at distances of 4-5 AU, AU being the distance from