Worlds Beyond The Solar System

NASA discovered a system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star outside our solar system. All of these seven rocky planets could have water which is a key to life and three of them are firmly located in the habitable zone. This system is about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth. Because of locating outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as exoplanets. This exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, name of telescope in Chile. Researchers using TRAPPIST announced they had discovered three planets in the system and then discovered more to seven by several ground-based telescopes. Moreover, NASA used data from Spitzer to measure the sizes of the seven planets and estimates the masses and density of six of them. The data indicated that they are likely to be rocky and could have liquid water on their surfaces but the mass of the seventh has not been estimated yet. Scientists assumed it could be an icy like snowball world. The temperature of TRAPPIST-1 star is cooler than our sun,

Throughout history humanity has been fascinated by the existence of extraterrestrial life. Today such ventures are in the development process and the discovery of life beyond our solar system, no matter how primitive, may soon become a huge(important?) scientific breakthrough. The three basic things that are required to consider a place even remotely habitable are water, a source of energy, and organic materials. Habitability also depends on other factors that must also be taken into consideration such as how close the planet is to its star (in the case of our solar system, the sun), how long the water and organic materials existed there, and the size and mass of the planet. One must not confuse habitable with inhabited. The term

Indeed, most of the problem is that there is no formal definition of a planet. Furthermore, it is very difficult to invent one that would allow the solar system to contain all nine planets. I suggest that for an object to be classified as a planet, it must embody three characteristics. It must be in orbit around a star (thus removing the larger satellites from contention), it must be too small to generate heat by nuclear

Going back to the criteria the three pieces of criteria it needs to meet are, the object must orbit the sun, the object must be a sphere and it must be created and maintained by its own gravitational force, and the object must have a clear path around its orbit of other objects. Pluto does orbit the sun. It does have a spherical shape, but Pluto’s path is not clear, it is crowded with lots of other objects. That proves that Pluto is not a planet because, it only meets two of the three criteria pieces.There are rocks in outer space that are the same size as Pluto! That’s pretty small to be considered a planet. If you look at a comparison of the other planets and Pluto you will see the drastic difference. Pluto is just simply too puny to be a planet. Many people say that it should be continued to be thought of as a planet because it has been that way for a long time and that's how most people know Pluto as, a planet. That doesn’t matter though, just because people are used to it being known as a planet doesn’t mean Pluto should still be considered a planet. Facts clearly show that Pluto is a dwarf planet. There are rocks in outer space that are the same size as Pluto! That’s pretty small to be considered a planet. All in all, Pluto clearly isn’t considered a planet, because it only meets two out of the three criteria pieces to be considered a

have yet been detected on any of the nearly 2,000 scientifically confirmed exoplanets. So we

We cannot get close enough to observe with our own eyes, so there are different techniques that can be utilized to garner this information. This part of the equation is characterized as Fp, Fp is the fraction of stars that actually have planets. One method used in the study of potential solar systems is the transit method. This is the dimming of a star which can show a planet passing in front, which in turn proves that a planetary system exists around that star. This example is much like the experiment we did in class that showed the planets passing around the yellow sphere that was lit up inside.

Pluto belongs with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, or the outer planets. In our solar system, there are two groups of planets called the inner planets, and the outer planets. The inner planets are the first four planets before the asteroid belt, while the outer planets are the ones after the asteroid belt. The asteroid belt is a region of space the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, which probably contains million of asteroids. It is where most of the asteroids in our solar system are found orbiting the sun. Although Pluto was a part of the outer planets, it was the only known planet that orbits mostly in the Kuiper belt. Beyond Neptune is a region full of icy bodies, known as the Kuiper belt. This is what made Pluto stands out, not to mention that it’s also a lot smaller than the other outer planets. This got some astronomers thinking about whether or not Pluto should really be considered a

The first specification a celestial object needs to meet to be considered a planet is that it needs to orbit around the Sun. The second is it has to have sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape). It also needs to have "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit. Once an object has met all three of these standards it will officially be considered a planet. Consequently, if it meets less than three it will be placed in a category other than planet.

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.

There are eight planets in the solar system Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. There is also a Dwarf planet Pluto.

The main searches for exoplanets are being done by space missions. The Kepler space mission is finding the most exoplanets, however there are many other space missions like Gaia, MOST, CoRoT, and SWEEPS, that are finding exoplanets in habitable zones. There are also ground missions including the Anglo Australian Planet Search and HARPS which is done in Geneva. This graph shows all the exoplanets found that are less than 10Me or 1.5Re mapped on the habitable zone. The sizes of the circles indicate the radius of the planet, which has been estimated, if not

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.

Humans have longed to believe in extrasolar planets, as surely there have to be planets elsewhere in the universe. Claims of supposedly discovered extrasolar planets can be dated back to 1855 when Captain S. W. Jacobs from the Madras observatory, claimed that he had discovered a planet orbiting a binary system (Jacobs 1855), all the way up until 1991 when a team of astronomers announced then retracted the alleged discovery of an extrasolar planet around a pulsar star (Lyne and Bailes 1992). Planets are extremely hard to detect as they are a very faint light source and the light from its parent star is much brighter and essentially blocks out light from a planet (Winters 1996). It was not until 1992 when the first exoplanets were confirmed

"A planet is a celestial body that revolves around a central star and does not shine by its own light " (Grolier, 1992). The only planetary system that is known to man is our

In 2006, the IAU set a definition for a planet in the solar system as the following: is in orbit around the Sun, has sufficient mass to assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (or a nearly spherical shape) and has cleared the neighborhood around the object. Dwarf Planets passed two of the three necessary requirements of the planet test. One is that they are always in orbit around the Sun and the other is that they are nearly spherical in shape. However, they did not pass the test of clearing its neighborhood of any debris. Planets are able to clear smaller bodies near its orbit such as small asteroids through collision, capture or gravitational disturbance. Dwarf planets lack the mass to do so. As a result, they have a weak gravitational force that is unable to keep its orbital influence cleared from asteroids that float around in the Kuiper Belt territory.