Kepler: 1284 discovered new exoplanets, 9 might harbor life

Never before it had been confirmed the existence of such a substantial number of exoplanets in one go. 1284 objects, among those spotted by the Kepler spacecraft of NASA on the hunt for planets in space, are now confirmed as planets. To say the agency's astronomers, announcement that leads to more than 2,000 exoplanets glad to Kepler and doubles at once the figure released with the latest updates.

During his time spent in space Kepler has located more than 4,500 "candidates" exoplanets, but scientists have confirmed it was only for a small number. The space probe based his findings on the brightness of the stars in the galaxy produce. When an orbiting planet passes in front of its star causes a small weakening in brightness that Kepler can measure due to various algorithms. These signals can be used to calculate the size, the orbital period and the mass of extremely distant exoplanets.

This method is not always reliable, however, and that is why not all the detections of Kepler can be confirmed. It is likely in other words that the signal received by the sensor or a false positive caused by an object in orbit that can not be considered a planet. To ensure the reliability of the discovery researchers must conduct a validation process the signals from the spacecraft and determine what they are actually caused by large objects such as to be considered exoplanets.

This process is however very long and complex, and requires in-depth study of every possible candidate, case by case. Thanks to new mathematical models has improved by far the effectiveness of the systems used to date, which is why that NASA was able to confirm the data on a large number of exoplanets. Thanks to the results of probes as Kepler, to date more than 5,000 candidates for exoplanets have been identified, and those confirmed are about 3,200, with most coming from its Kepler.

New 1,284 about 550 could be rocky planets, given their size. Nine of these are found in orbit within the so-called habitable zone, the ideal distance from its star where it is possible the formation of sources of water on the planet's surface. Since even the Earth is a rocky planet orbiting in its habitable zone, these nine exoplanets could be observed with greater attention for the search for extraterrestrial life.

In total they were detected and confirmed 21 potentially rocky planets in habitable zones thanks to Kepler. But relying on the spacecraft data, astronomers estimate that there may be about 10 billion rocky planets in our galaxy orbiting in a habitable zone. For the future NASA aims to study the atmospheres of the newly discovered planets, and to that end will launch in 2018 the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space telescope ever built by man.

The James Webb will be able to study the confirmed planets with a higher level of detail such as by measuring the way in which the stars filtered light through the atmospheres of exoplanets, element that can give us important elements on the types of gas present and enable us to measure the chance of finding in them traces of biological life.