24 "super-habitable" exoplanets potentially better than Earth identified Imprimare
International
Miercuri, 07 Octombrie 2020 12:22

Artist's concept of the first validated Earth-sized exoplanet found by the Kepler Space Telescope

A team of scientists led by Washington State University (WSU) geobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch has identified two dozen exoplanets that could be more favorable to life than the Earth. Based on data from the Kepler mission, these super-habitable worlds may have conditions more suitable for sustaining life for a longer period of time than our planet.
One of the major questions vexing modern science is whether there is life elsewhere in the universe. While no direct evidence of such life has been discovered, exoplanet-hunting missions like Kepler have changed many of our ideas about how planetary systems are formed and have provided scientists with the means to think about life beyond our solar system without leaning so heavily on conjecture and speculation.

Out of the more than 4,000 exoplanets found so far, a number have been deemed to be habitable, though this is a somewhat misleading term. It doesn't mean a planet where one could land and start homesteading. It means a rocky planet that is in the right orbital region around its star where the temperature is moderate enough for liquid water to exist on its surface without freezing or boiling away. To give an idea of how generous this is, Earth is habitable under these criteria, but so are Venus and Mars, which are scarcely garden spots.

Now, WSU has refined the search a bit and have come up with 24 candidate exoplanets that are not only habitable, but potentially more habitable than the Earth. Situated more than 100 light years from the Sun, these exoplanets culled from the Kepler Object of Interest Exoplanet Archive of transiting exoplanets were selected because they have some properties that might make them better able to sustain life.

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*-- https://newatlas.com/space/two-dozen-exoplanets-superhabitable-identified/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=153f21d112-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_10_06_08_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-153f21d112-90431105