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In the Zone: How Scientists Search for Habitable Planets

By Guest PostJuly 18, 2013Scienceatmosphere, exoplanets, goldilocks planets, habitable planets, habitable zone, kepler 69c, kepler mission, liquid water, lucianne walkowicz, NASA, penn state university, radiation, ravi kumar kopparapu, scientists, search, solar system, star, stephen kane, super earth, super venus planet, total energy output, venus like planet

There is only one planet we know of, so far, that is drenched with life. That planet is Earth, as you may have guessed, and it has all the right conditions for critters to thrive on its surface. Do other planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, also host life forms?

Astronomers still don’t know the answer, but they search for potentially habitable planets using a handful of criteria. Ideally, they want to find planets just like Earth, since we know without a doubt that life took root here. The hunt is on for planets about the size of Earth that orbit at just the right distance from their star – in a region termed the habitable zone. (more…)

Star with flare

NASA telescope provides insights into unusual dwarf star

Astronomer John Gizis of the University of Delaware, working with data obtained by NASA’s Kepler telescope, is studying a highly unusual dwarf star and its powerful flares that may hold clues to the likelihood of life on other planets as well as to the behavior of our sun.

Gizis, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, discovered the star two years ago using a ground-based telescope and now has conducted additional research using Kepler observations over the past two years. (more…)

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In the Zone: How Scientists Search for Habitable Planets

Star with flare