A photo from open sources PHOTO: NASA International Group astronomers discovered in the constellation of the Dragon planet similar to the Earth. True, the size of this “mega-Earth” is more like Jupiter, however, unlike the gas giant, its surface is covered rocks, writes The Washington Post. The discovery was made at using the Kepler orbiting telescope, a new planet has already been assigned name Kepler 10c. The mass of the planet is 17 times greater than the earth. Age scientists estimated the celestial body at 11 billion years, in other words, it formed 3 billion years after the emergence of the universe. Rather total, there is no life on Kepler 10c: the celestial body is located too close to the parent star. However, scientists noted, if there and living organisms existed, they would be very squat due to strong gravity. Kepler telescope launched into orbit in 2009 d. to search for exoplanets (planets outside the solar system – in others stars). One of his latest finds is the planet Kepler-413b, which is located at a distance of 2.3 thousand light years from Earth, in constellation Cygnus. It is noteworthy that its axis of rotation is constantly swinging like a top. Because of this, the change of seasons there happening fast and unpredictable. Kepler-413b can’t live be in principle: the celestial body is too close to the pair stars around which it revolves. According to scientists, in the galaxy The Milky Way is located at least 2 billion planets on whose surfaces, as on Earth, are water, and therefore the conditions for the existence of life. The closest to us similar celestial body located at 12 million light years.
As follows from the report of the US National Academy of Sciences, in A galaxy around 22% of stars like the sun revolves around planets which receive the same amount of light energy as the Earth, that is located in the so-called “habitable zone”. All in all in the Galaxy approximately 100 billion stars, of which almost 10% are sun-like. Kepler has so far studied over 150 thousand stars. Today astronomers can reliably name more than 3 thousand planets suitable for life. Their orbits are far enough from their stars, so that water from the surface of objects does not start to evaporate, but not so far so that it freezes and turns into ice. In the future, scientists plan to study their atmosphere to finally find out whether life was born there.
Mikhail MOROZOV
Galaxy Water Telescope Life
