A Riverina astrophysicist says the discovery of seven planets with Earth-like environments is another step closer to discovering we are not alone in the universe.
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Charles Sturt university senior lecturer Dr Allan Ernest was excited by the news from US space agency NASA, saying the discovery was akin to explorers of yesteryear discovering a new continent.
Dr Ernest said it was all but certain other intelligent life was out there, but factors such as mass extinction events came into play.
“(This discovery) is another indication that there are planets out there that are probably able to support life,” he said, adding we might not have to look that far to find life.
“Even the moons of Jupiter and Saturn might be able to support life.”
Dr Ernest said technology had come so far that scientists could detect whether a planet’s atmosphere contained oxygen or water.
He said the significance of the finding is that they are rocky planets, the same category as the Earth.
“Their temperatures could be right to sustain life depending on what the composition of their atmosphere might be,” he said.
Dr Ernest said while it was an exciting discovery, it was thought the star system was not very old.
“So even if conditions are right for life, there may not have been enough time for life to form,” he said
“However, the star has a very long expected lifetime so life may form on these planets in the future.
“The exciting thing is that with the new telescopes being commissioned (such as the James Webb telescope) we should get much more information about the possibility of life on these exoplanets in the near future.”
Well-known amateur astronomer David Reneke, who writes a column in the Weekend Advertiser, said the discovery was significant.
“The Holy Grail is to find a planet that is an exact copy of Earth to go to one day,” Mr Reneke said. “This discovery ticks eight of 10 boxes – it’s the closest so far.”
The star system of the moment – TRAPPIST-1 – is around 40 light years – or more than 520 million kilometres away from Earth.
The planets orbit a star that is about half as cool as our sun and is about the size of Jupiter.
“If you got into a commercial plane in a non-stop flight it would take 44 million years to get there,” Mr Reneke said.
The seven planets fall into what astronomers refer to as the goldilocks zone, according to Mr Reneke.
“They are not too hot or not too cold,” he said.
Mr Reneke said the planets were “tidally locked”, which meant one face of the planet always faced the star.
The times the planets take to orbit their sun range from 1.5 to 12.4 Earth days.