Experts have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets, but an exomoon has yet to be definitively discovered, despite the 2018 announcement that something was orbiting Kepler-1625b.
But now, researchers believe they may have discovered the presence of six exomoons orbiting six distant planets.
The study notes that these six exoplanets have disturbed orbits from what are believed to be celestial satellites.
DARTH VADER’S PLACE OF BIRTH FOUND? EVIDENCE OF DANGEROUS VOLCANO, THE WORLD OF LAVA WITH DEEP SPACE
“We can say that these six new systems are completely consistent with exomoons: their masses and orbits are such that they would be stable; they would be small enough so that their own transits were not seen; and reproduce the pattern of [transit timing variations] seen across the entire Kepler dataset, “study lead author Chris Fox said in a statement.
However, the technology to confirm them with direct images is not available, so “that will have to wait for more progress,” Fox added.
The researchers looked at data from the now-retired Kepler space telescope from NASA with exoplanets ranging from 200 to 3,000 light-years from Earth. A light year, which measures distance in space, is approximately 6 trillion miles.
Although not confirmed, the likely existence of the exomoons was detected after they were influenced by the planet on which they orbit, according to Paul Wiegert, co-author of the study.
EXOMOONS COULD BE THE HOME OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE
“These exomoon candidates are so small that they cannot be seen from their own transits. Rather, its presence is revealed by its gravitational influence on its parent planet, ”said Wiegert.
The research has been published in the arXiv repository, but has not yet been peer reviewed.
According to Space.com, there could be as many as 100 exoplanets that have exomoons. In comparison, there are more than 150 moons for just the eight planets in the Solar System, according to data compiled by NASA.
In June 2019, a researcher suggested that exomoons could contain liquid water and therefore support life, citing the heat they could generate due to “the gravitational pull of the planet they orbit.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
