Hey guys, it's Mike Chen, thank you so much for watching Beyond Science
As many of you may have heard,
NASA made a huge annoucement today
I'll try to sum it up for you
NASA has just announced
that astronomer have found seven,
yes, seven exoplanets orbiting the same star
40 light-years away.
Now what's really amazing about this discovery and this is a huge discovery is that
these planets are all very earth-like.
Because they have similar size of to earth.
And potentially,
well, the way they made it sound is very likely
that they have water on their surface to support living life forms.
I know that these studies come up a lot
and we talked about many times in the past
about a second earth found here, a second earth found there.
But this is the first time ever
that so many potentially habitable planets
are orbiting around the same star
According to NASA,
these seven planets all orbit around Trappist-1
an ultra cooled dwarf star,
locate around 40 light-years away from earth.
Michaël Gillon, lead study author
and astronomer at University of Liège in Belgium said that
this is the first time that so many planets of this kind
are found around the same star.
And here's the thing,
not only have astronomers found these seven exoplanets
they were able to calculate the mass and radii of these planets as well.
And from their calculations, they were able to find out
that the planets are habitable rocky planets
rather than gas planets like Jupiter.
These three planets are most ideal temperature [wide]
and may even have oceans on their surface
And out of the three ideal planets,
researchers say that Trappist-1f is the most ideal
and has the highest chance of supporting life.
Although it's colder than Earth,
it would be a completely livable place if we had enough greenhouse gases
and the right atmosphere.
So this is what we know so far about the Trappist-1 star
and its surrounding exoplanets.
First of all, we called Trappist-1 a star
but in reality, it's barely a star due to its temperature and mass
in comparison to the Sun.
It has half the temperature of the Sun
and only a tenth of the mass.
It's also red in color, very dim.
And if you compare it to Jupiter, they're pretty much the same size,
with the Trappist-1 just a bit larger
So basically, Trappist-1 is a tiny yet ultra-cool dwarf star.
Now moving on to the seven planets surrounding Trappist-1
a fun fact about these newly discovered planets is that,
they would have absolutely breath-taking views.
I know that sounds kind of superficial
I know that sounds kind of dumb
but still, hey you know what,
I always want to live on a planet,
I wake up and just see other planets all around me in the sky.
And this is way better than any ocean view or central park view
because here, the rich people can just come and take [over] the property
to have the best vantage points.
So anyway back to the view,
if you were to stand on one of these Trappist's planets,
the other six planets would appear in the sky
and would be big
as twice as big as the moon.
Even more, if you were standing on the Trappist-1 f planet,
the dwarf star would be three times as big as the Sun
and would just hanging in the sky
with all its salmon huge beauty.
Because the star is red, it glows a gentle salmon light over the planets.
Another fun fact about these planets is that
if you were to stand on the surface of one of them,
you would be warm
even though you're getting 20 times less light than you get from the Sun.
And this is because the star is so close to all these planets
and radiating energy is strong.
Now not only is the star closed to the planets,
the planets are also closed to each other
and buy closed, I mean within a space
five times smaller than the distance from Mercury to our Sun.
Because of that, we are able to study all the planet in depth
and learn more about the planetary system.
We were also able to find out that the orbits of the surrounding exoplanets
which range from one-and-a-half to nearly 13 earthday.
And if you're wondering how this amazing discovery was made
these small ultra-cool dwarf stars
are often neglected or overlooked
when it comes to space studies.
But in 2010, the Trappist, a Belgium optic robotic telescope
began to observe the space around a dwarf star
which is now the Trappist-1
and study its light and changes in brightness.
While studying, they saw shadows that periodically appeared
which actually turned out to be planets.
In May of this year,
it was announced that there were three planets orbiting Trappist-1
but recently by using ground-based telescopes
and space-based telescopes together,
it's been confirmed that there are seven planets
in which we determined the orbital distance from their star, radii and masses.
What's gonna happen next is that over the next decade
researchers have the goal of, findding out what each planet's atmosphere is like.
As well as finding out if these planets really do have water on the surface
the James Webb space telescope will be launched in 2018
to observe large exoplanets
because they will be located 1 million miles away from Earth.
Four additional telescopes named Speculoos based in Chile
will also survey the southern sky for this purpose.
That will allow us to see more closely
what lies in our universe.
Another important question astronomers and researchers want to answer is
are we really alone?
And that's like the question I think on everybody's mind.
Could there be more life forms out there
that we yet to discover.
And according to Amaury Triaud,
one of the study author and astronomer at University of Cambridge:
"I think we've made a crucial step towards finding
if there is life out there...
I don't think any time before we have the right planet to discover
and find out if there was life.
Here, if life managed to thrive and releases gases similar to what we have on earth
we will know.
Of course, finding out that there is a habitable planet
and actually moving to that said planet
are two different stories.
It would take us millions of years to reach Trappist-1 using current technology
because it's 40 light years away.
But there are already a lot of researchs going into creating faster spaceship
Such as one's running on the EM-drive,
which is any electromagnetic propulsion drive
that generates thrust by bouncing microwave in a closed container.
And this could allow us to travel to planets like Mars in just 75 days
And although 40 light-years sounds really far right now,
it's still a crucial step towards finding out more
about what lies within our universe
So yeah, pretty exciting guys
we could potentially have four earths, counting this one to live on.
I mean, imagine that, more planets for us
to potentially polute and cows to fart on.
But seriously,
this is really super exciting news.
And I'm willing to bet, I'm going to call it right here.
I bet you, there's already life on these plannets.
I'm gonna wager this,
if YouTube still exists by the time we find or land all these planets
I'm gonna call it right here,
there's life on the planet right now.
And they may not all be friendly or edible.
That's a crazy thought right?
If, let's say, we find a planet that's completely habitable
and it has some sort of vegetation or native animals on there.
And of course, being human,
we're probably going to eat them.
I mean, comeon, we drink coffee made from essentially cat poop.
Yeah, we're eating the aliens.
So I'm just wondering what happened to us.
Let's say we ate a alien plant or animal,
what would happen to our bodies
what would happen to our kids,
what would we looked for different?
what would become deformed or have superpowers.
Maybe humans have already venture to the stars
but because of our diets
and we ate the native plants and animals from other planets
maybe that's what causes to look all alien.
Anyway, I don't know, this stupid created theory, don't listen to me.
But anyway,
really exciting news from NASA,
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Do you believe that these planets are going to be eventually habitable?
And if so do you think, do you think there's already alien life existing on this particular planets.
And let's say both are true and they need human volunteers
to be the first group to live on this planet,
would you volunteer?
Thank you all so much for watching this video.
I'll see you.
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