Second Earth? Data from NASA’s Kepler telescope helped discover exoplanets with habitable conditions; details

An illustration of Kepler-1649c orbiting its host red dwarf star. (Image: NASA / Ames Research Center / Daniel Rutter)

Planetary discoveries: A second Earth may have been found! Re-analyzing data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which is being used by a team of scientists, has led to the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet. What’s more, the exoplanet has been found orbiting its star’s habitable zone, the space agency said in a press release. The habitable zone is that area around a star where a rocky planet can support liquid water, the agency explained. The exoplanet is about 300 light years from Earth and is the most similar to our planet in size and temperature of all the planets identified using Kepler, NASA said.

Called Kepler-1649c, the planet was discovered by the team when they were reviewing data from previous observations of the Kepler telescope, which had been removed by NASA in 2018, according to the statement from the US space agency. Kepler-1649c is only 1.06 times the size of Earth. Furthermore, the amount of light received by the exoplanet from its star is approximately 75% of the amount of light received by Earth from the Sun, indicating a temperature similar to ours.

NASA is also looking at the discovery with enthusiasm due to the fact that while Kepler-1649c itself is similar in size and temperature to Earth, it also provides your system with a whole new vision. In your system, for every nine times the outer planet orbits the host star, the inner planet rotates around the star almost exactly four times, which means your system is extremely stable and likely to last a long time.

Why was Kepler-1649c coming out now?

The Kepler telescope had been retired in 2018, and had actually stopped collecting data from space in 2013. So we wondered how the exoplanet’s existence came about now.

The agency explained in the statement that the planetary body had been misidentified while being searched for by a computer algorithm, this team of researchers took a second look and identified it as a planet.

The space agency used a computer algorithm, called Robovetter, to classify the enormous data collected by the Kepler telescope, which looked at the stars and searched for planets by observing the falls in their brightness as the planets passed in front of them. However, most of the time, the drops in brightness were caused by bodies other than planets, such as a change in the brightness of the star or perhaps by passing comets. Scientists created Robovetter to identify 12% of falls caused by planets and not by other bodies. The algorithm labeled what it evaluated as non-planetary dips in brightness with the signature “false positive.”

Given that the scientists were aware of the chances that the algorithm was likely to fail at some point, a dedicated team known as the Kepler False Positive Working Group was tasked with rechecking false-positive signatures to ensure that no exoplanets were lost. and a later discovery.

It was when this group double-checked the algorithm’s false positives that they discovered that Kepler-1649c was, in fact, one of the mistakes made by Robovetter.

Kepler-1649c: What’s Next?

The agency said that while the discovery is exciting, the exoplanet orbits a red dwarf, unlike Earth. This type of star has never been observed in our system, but the red dwarf star does have star buds that can pose a challenge to any potential life on a planet.

However, NASA is not allowing this to lessen their enthusiasm. Speaking about the discovery, associate administrator for NASA’s Scientific Mission Directorate, Thomas Zurbuchen, was quoted in the statement as saying that the discovery has given them hope for a second Earth that lies among the stars, “waiting to be found.” .

The statement further said that there is still much about the planet that is not yet known, including its atmosphere, that could affect the prevailing temperature on it. Furthermore, calculations on the size of the exoplanet also have a significant margin of error, as do calculations for all astronomical objects so far, NASA said.

However, the discovery of Kepler-1649c remains exciting for researchers, especially those who have been trying to establish the presence of life on other planets or discover other habitable planets.