John Grunsfeld, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the NASA headquarters in Washington, reported that “On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun”. This habitable zone is described as “the region near a star where liquid water could collect on the surface of a planet that is circling a G2-type star”. They are looking for celestial bodies orbiting alien stars at just the right distance – not close enough causing the heat of the star to boil the oceans, but not as far away as to ensure a frozen planet. As a result, its transits are only visible to astronomers 9 percent of the time. Accurate assessments of size and mass, it’s been argued, helps researchers see if a planet is actually a terrestrial world (like Earth). In a binary star system, the habitable zone is more complex than around a single star, but it can be readily calculated once astronomers know the masses, radii, and temperatures of the stars.
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Kepler-453b is in the habitable zone of this system.
Despite the fact that most of these planets would have adequate atmospheric conditions, they would be ravaged by intense solar winds. But because Kepler-453b is affected by the gravitational pull of two stars, not just one, its orbit is more erratic – “like a spinning top”, said Kane. The discovery marks an important milestone and comes only four years after the first Kepler circumbinary planet was detected. “This means that there is a lot of value to continuing to monitor such systems since there’s many planetary systems that are avoiding detection simply because we’re not looking at the right time”.
Plate tectonics operate like a form of planetary sweat. When the Earth tries to cool itself, cold plates sink downward and absorb heat, while volcanoes release heat where plates are spreading apart and forming. “If it’s too hot, plate tectonics seizes up and if it’s too cold, it freezes up”.
Nasa’s Kepler mission has discovered a new planet orbiting two stars and located within its host stars’ “habitable zone”, the area around the stars in which life could potentially exist.
“If this is the case, you can end up with a planet that has only one big plate and can become an extreme greenhouse like Venus”, Jackson said.
In their new study, the researchers argue that if the Earth’s crust had a higher concentration of those elements, plate tectonics would not have formed.
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Anyone can go on there and look for circumbinary planets. Based on the size measurements, they determined that it is not a rocky planet but a gas giant. The planet could harbor rocky moons, which may contain life.
