It was reported in August 2020, that our galaxy could be littered with warm and watery planets like Earth. The researchers at Penn State University used data from NASA’s Kepler telescope to estimate the number of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way. They suggested that an Earth-like planet orbits one in every four Sun-like stars.
The estimate is an important step in the search for alien life and a better understanding of the number of Earth-like planets in our galaxy can provide data for projects like the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, intended to hunt for signs of oxygen and water vapour on distant planets.
The next step is to study potentially habitable planets to figure out what they’re made of in the search for alien life. Scientists are particularly interested in searching for molecules, indicative of life, in the atmospheres of roughly Earth-size planets. A planet needs a substantial atmosphere to trap enough heat to sustain liquid water on its surface even if it is in a star’s habitable zone. The composition of an exoplanet’s atmosphere can be calculated by measuring how its star’s light behaves as it passes through.
Earth-like Planet As per Ford’s team, an Earth-like planet as being anywhere from three-quarters to one-and-a-half times the size of Earth, and orbiting its star every 237 to 500 days.
NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope Launched in 2009, the telescope used what’s known as the transit method to find worlds outside our solar system. It has watched more than 5,30,000 stars for tiny dips in a star’s brightness that could be caused by a planet passing in front of it.
NASA findings reveal Ceres to be an ocean world with salty water below its surface