Following after NASA's teaser about a so-called major discovery, astronomers from the American space agency have recently announced a groundbreaking discovery that is seen to have the ability of creating a monumental impact on life beyond Earth. NASA authorities have just revealed their discovery of a planetary system with a number of Earth-sized planets that could host liquid water and, thus, life in general. Just last year, a research team operating the ESO's Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, or TRAPPIST, discovered that a small, dim red dwarf star about 39 light-years away had three planets orbiting it which was then called the "Goldilocks Zone".
The 'Goldilocks Zone'
According to reports revealed by Futurism, these three alien worlds may have entire oceans of water, which is seen to have the ability of dramatically increasing the possibility of life. Researchers said that the other planets are less likely to host oceans of water, but the team claims there is still a potential that liquid water could be present on each of these worlds. Additionally, the experts have revealed that all of these planets are so far the best targets found to search for signs of life in the next decade, and it is remarkable that they are all transiting the same star which will allegedly allow them to study each planet in great depth, providing for the first time a rich perspective on a different planetary system than ours.
A New Planetary System
In one of his statements reported by Popular Mechanics, the team, spearheaded by Michaël Gillon from the STAR Institute at the University of Liège in Belgium, has eagerly turned more telescopes toward TRAPPIST-1, which has included NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the ESO's Very Large Telescope. NASA researchers have explained that the planets pass very close to each other that if a person was standing on one of the planet's surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth's sky. However, experts have highly emphasized that despite the facts that the have presented, they still know very little about these planets, almost nothing beyond estimates for their size, distance from the host star, and orbital periods.
Furthermore, the team said that these new discoveries imply that TRAPPIST-1 is of monumental importance for future study. As of the press time, the Hubble Space Telescope is already being used to search for atmospheres around the planets. Ultimately, Emmanuël Jehin, a scientist who has also worked on the research, asserts that future telescopes could allow us to truly see into the heart of this system.
