Finding habitable earth-like planets around other sun-like stars has never been an easy task.
FORBES: Earth-Like Exo-Moons Can Lurk Well Beyond Planetary Habitable Zones, Say Astronomers
Earth-like planets in habitable zones form in the presence of large amounts of water, the researchers suggest.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Earth-like planets may be common
ESA, have plans to launch missions to search for Earth-like planets during the course of the next decade.
With the data it gains from the mission, particularly relating to Earth-like planets, the team hopes to inform future space research.
BBC: Corot will be launched just after Christmas (Image: Cnes)
Kepler data have yielded an estimate of the total number of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy: at least 17 billion.
If it does, then when the Earth-like planets start to roll in, the astronomers responsible may be drinking their toasts with a twist.
The team concluded that about one of every three known planetary systems could harbour Earth-like planets in habitable zones further out than the Hot Jupiters.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Earth-like planets may be common
Dr Boss estimates that Nasa's Kepler mission, due for launch in March, should begin finding some of these Earth-like planets within the next few years.
Fischer is going after Earth-like planets in the habitable zone.
Since Kepler finds planets by measuring the tiny dips in a star's brightness when a dark planet moves across the face of that star, less accurate photometry means Earth-like planets will be too hard to find.
Non-astronomers may not care much about the fine distinctions between stars and gas-giants, but understanding their origins will help explain how small, rocky planets come into existence and how commonplace such earth-like planets are likely to be.
Kepler is searching for Earth-like planets around far-flung stars, and the Mars Science Laboratory will sample the Red Planet's geology looking for the building blocks of life - though it will not explicitly look for life itself.
Mars is more like Earth than any other place in the known universe, and while astronomers now believe there may be millions of earth-like planets in our galaxy, Mars is the only one that is within reach.
In the second decade of this century, Esa plans to launch the Darwin flotilla - a fleet of four or five spacecraft that will hunt for Earth-like planets around other stars and analyse their atmospheres for signs of extra-terrestrial life.
BBC: Corot will be launched just after Christmas (Image: Cnes)
How often the Universe has planets truly like the earth - true earth twins, planets the size of the earth, rocky planets with a surface that supports liquid water - well, we don't have that number yet, but I'm optimistic we'll figure it out.
Advanced science instruments aboard future spacecraft, such as the proposed European Plato mission, could find many more Earth-mass planets orbiting Sun-like stars.
But the fact that rocky planets can take shape around metal-poor stars means the first roughly Earth-like worlds may have formed long, long ago.
应用推荐