Astronomers have discovered 85 new exoplanets that could potentially host alien life, according to a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal. These planets are located in the habitable zone of their stars, meaning that they have the right temperature and atmospheric conditions to support liquid water on their surfaces.
The researchers used data from NASA’s Kepler mission, which observed more than 500,000 stars in a small patch of the sky between 2009 and 2018. They applied a novel technique called transit duration variation (TDV) to identify planets that have slightly different orbital periods due to the gravitational influence of other planets in their systems. This method can detect smaller and more distant planets than the traditional transit method, which relies on measuring the dip in starlight when a planet passes in front of its star.
The team found 85 new candidates that had not been previously reported by Kepler or other surveys. They confirmed the planetary nature of 18 of them using follow-up observations from ground-based telescopes. The rest are awaiting confirmation, but the authors are confident that they are genuine planets and not false positives.
Among the confirmed planets, nine are located in the habitable zone of their stars, and four are potentially rocky worlds similar to Earth. These are prime targets for future missions that aim to search for signs of life beyond our solar system, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch later this year.
The study also reveals some interesting patterns in the distribution and diversity of exoplanets. For example, the researchers found that most of the habitable zone planets are orbiting low-mass stars, which are more common and longer-lived than sun-like stars. They also found that multi-planet systems tend to have more compact and circular orbits than single-planet systems, which could have implications for their stability and habitability.
The authors hope that their findings will inspire further exploration of these new worlds and their potential for hosting life. They also plan to apply their TDV method to other datasets, such as NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is currently scanning the entire sky for exoplanets. With more data and more techniques, they expect to discover even more planets that could have aliens.
