9A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2017
Seven Earth-size worlds found orbiting star
Three planets
could hold life
By MARCIA DUNN
Associated Press
NASA/JPL-Caltech
An artist’s conception of what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like, based on available data about their diameters, masses and distances
from the host star. The planets circle tightly around a dim dwarf star called Trappist-1, barely the size of Jupiter. Three are in the so-called habitable
zone, where liquid water and, possibly life, might exist. The others are right on the doorstep.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
An artist’s conception of what the surface of the exoplan-
et TRAPPIST-1f may look like, based on available data
about its diameter, mass and distances from the host star.
life-bearing worlds out there
just waiting to be found,” she
said.
NASA’s Thomas Zurbu-
chen, associate administrator
for the science mission, said
the discovery “gives us a hint
that finding a second Earth
is not just a matter of if, but
when,” and addresses the age-
old question of “Are we alone
out there?”
“We’re making a step for-
ward with this, a leap forward
in fact, toward answering that
question,” Zurbuchen said at a
news conference.
Could be more
Last spring, the Univer-
sity of Liege’s Michael Gillon
and his team reported finding
three planets around Trappist-1.
Now the count is up to seven,
ANNUAL
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
— For the first time, astrono-
mers have discovered seven
Earth-size planets orbiting a
single nearby star — and these
new worlds could hold life.
This cluster of planets is
less than 40 light-years away
in the constellation Aquar-
ius, according to NASA and
the Belgian-led research team
who announced the discovery
Wednesday.
The planets circle tightly
around a dim dwarf star called
Trappist-1, barely the size
of Jupiter. Three are in the
so-called habitable zone, the
area around a star where water
and, possibly life, might exist.
The others are right on the
doorstep.
Scientists said they need to
study the atmospheres before
determining whether these
rocky, terrestrial planets could
support some sort of life. But it
already shows just how many
Earth-size planets could be out
there — especially in a star’s
sweet spot, ripe for extrater-
restrial life. The more planets
like this, the greater the poten-
tial of finding one that’s truly
habitable. Until now, only two
or three Earth-size planets had
been spotted around a star. A
rocky Earth-sized world inside
a star’s habitable zone is con-
sidered the best candidate for
finding evidence of life.
“We’ve made a crucial step
toward finding if there is life
out there,” said the University
of Cambridge’s Amaury Tri-
aud, one of the researchers.
The potential for more
Earth-size planets in our Milky
Way galaxy is mind-boggling.
The history of planet-search-
ing shows “when there’s one,
there’s more,” said Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology
astrophysicist Sara Seager.
“With this amazing sys-
tem, we know that there must
be many more potentially
34 YEARS
and Gillon said there could
be more. Their latest findings
appear in the journal Nature.
This crowded yet compact
solar system — 235 trillion
miles away — is reminiscent of
Jupiter and its Galilean moons,
according to the researchers.
Picture this: If Trappist-1
were our sun, all seven plan-
ets would be inside Mercury’s
orbit. Mercury is the innermost
planet of our own solar system.
The ultracool star at the
heart of this system would
shine 200 times dimmer than
our sun, a perpetual twilight as
we know it. And the star would
glow red — maybe salmon-col-
ored, the researchers speculate.
“The spectacle would
be beautiful because every
now and then, you would see
another planet, maybe about
as big as twice the moon in the
sky, depending on which planet
you’re on and which planet you
look at,” Triaud said Tuesday in
a teleconference with reporters.
Years are exceedingly short
in this star system — the plan-
ets take just 1 ½ to 20 days to
orbit Trappist-1.
The Leiden Observato-
ry’s Ignas Snellen, who was
not involved in the study, is
excited by the prospect of
learning more about what he
calls “the seven sisters of planet
Earth.” In a companion article
in Nature, he said Gillon’s team
could have been lucky in nab-
bing so many terrestrial planets
in one stellar swoop.
“But finding seven transit-
ing Earth-sized planets in such
a small sample suggests that the
solar system with its four (sub-)
Earth-sized planets might be
nothing out of the ordinary,”
Snellen wrote.
Altogether,
astronomers
have confirmed close to 3,600
planets outside our solar system
since the 1990s, but barely four
dozen are in the potential habit-
able zone of their stars, and of
those, just 18 are approximately
the size of Earth.
Gillon and his team used
both ground and space tele-
scopes to identify and track the
seven Trappist-1 planets, which
they label simply by lowercase
letters, “b’’ through “h.” As is
typical in these cases, the let-
ter “A’’ — in upper case — is
reserved for the star. Planets
cast shadows on their star as
they pass in front of it; that’s
how the scientists spotted them.
Tiny, cold stars like Trap-
pist-1 were long shunned by
exoplanet-hunters (exoplanets
are those outside our solar sys-
tem). But the Belgian astron-
omers decided to seek them
out, building a telescope in
Chile to observe 60 of the clos-
est ultracool dwarf stars. Their
Trappist telescope lent its name
to this star.
While faint, the Trappist-1
star is close by cosmic stan-
dards, allowing astronomers
to study the atmospheres of
its seven temperate planets.
All seven look to be solid like
Earth — mostly rocky and pos-
sibly icy, too.
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