New discoveries made by a team of European astronomers suggest that planets that can live outside the solar system are capable of conserving and maintaining life.
These findings are similar to a team of scientists from various European centers who used the large VLT telescope at the European Southern Laboratory in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the results of which were published today in the journal Astronomy and Astronomy.
Scientists from the Center for Astrobiology (Joint Council for the High Council for Scientific Research and the National Institute of Space Technology) and the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics have participated in the research, as well as researchers from the University of Oberoi (Portugal), Genoa (Italy) and the Astronomical Laboratory.
Their work, in the European Southern Laboratory (ESO, abbreviated in English), shed new data on the planets of the “near” star (called L98-59) and evidence that some of those planets are similar to the inner zone of the solar system.
Of these findings, three stand alone: one planet is half the mass of Venus and therefore the smallest measured; A sea world; And a possible planet in the “habitable” zone because it is farthest from the possible star of life.
“The planet in that habitable zone may have an atmosphere that protects and sustains life.” Said Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio, an astronomer at the Madrid Astronomical Center for Astrobiology (CAB-CSIC) and one of the study’s leading authors.
The Southern Southern Laboratory – Europe’s leading intergovernmental astronomical system – shows that the results now indicate the most important step in the search for life on Earth-sized planets outside the solar system.
The detection of possible signs of past or present life – known as “biosignatures” in astronomy – depends on an exoplanet’s ability to study its atmosphere, but current telescopes are not yet far enough to reach the required resolution and receive information from the planets.
These scientists have studied some planets 35 light-years away from that star (L98-59); They are rocky – like Earth or Venus – so close to her that they are warm.
Thanks to the VLT telescope, researchers have confirmed that at least three of these planets may have water in their interiors or in their atmosphere; Two of them – the closest to the star – are dry, although they may contain small amounts of water, and 30 percent of the mass of the third planet may be water, which becomes the “ocean world”.
The ESO team has detected two previously unseen hidden planets in that planetary system, one of which is far from the star, allowing liquid water to remain on the surface.
In 2019 astronomers have already discovered that NASA is monitoring the satellite, Exoplanets, the three planets in this stellar system (L98-59).
But for continued scanning of space, and especially for this planetary system, astronomers are focusing on the next James Webb space telescope and the largest telescope (ELT) to be built by NASA and the European Southern Laboratory at Atacama (Chile). Can’t start early until 2027.
“This system announces coming”, Olivier Dimanzion, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences at the University of Porto (Portugal).
“Since the birth of astronomy we as a community have been chasing terrestrial planets, and now, finally, we are getting closer to finding a terrestrial planet in the habitable zone of its star, so we can study its atmosphere,” the researcher said in a note released by ESO. EFE
