104 newfound alien planets confirmed in cosmic haul
A team of researchers using telescopes in space and on Earth announced a new haul of about 100 previously undiscovered alien planets on Monday.
The cosmic "treasure trove" was revealed using data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and other observatories on Earth, according to a statement from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which was one of the telescopes that helped corroborate the planetary discoveries.
These newly confirmed worlds will now be added to the approximately 3,300 planets we know of outside the solar system.
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The newest bounty of exoplanets -- a term for planets outside the solar system -- even includes a special star system with four potentially rocky worlds.
The planets are thought to be between 20 and 50 percent more massive than Earth, according to the new findings, and they orbit a star far smaller and dimmer than the sun about 181 light-years away.
Two of the worlds in the system might have radiation levels equivalent to what Earth receives from the sun.
The worlds are in tight orbits around the star, which would typically mean they would be too hot to support life. However, it's still possible that a couple of the planets could be host to life, since the small star's habitable zone -- the orbits in which liquid water could be sustained on the surface of a planet -- is closer to the weak star than the sun's habitable zone is, for example.
These worlds might actually be perfect for follow-up observations in the future using a space observatory like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018.
According to Kepler scientist Steve Howell, the James Webb could help scientists how Earth-like these planets really are.
Hunting for planets around smaller stars
Smaller stars are much more common in the Milky Way than stars like the sun.
"Because these smaller stars are so common in the Milky Way, it could be that life occurs much more frequently on planets orbiting cool, red stars rather than planets around stars like our sun,” Ian Crossfield, the lead author of the new study detailing the exoplanet finds in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, said in a statement.
Today, Kepler is getting a good look at some of these relatively common star systems in the galaxy.
Kepler's original mission involved staring at a relatively small patch of sky and hunting for exoplanets in orbit around stars in that specific area. But Kepler's mission changed a few years ago when some components of the spacecraft broke, forcing scientists to improvise.
Now, Kepler peers at a much larger swath of the sky and gives scientists a better sense of possible worlds orbiting these smaller, relatively close (and therefore bright) stars, known as red dwarfs.
“Our analysis shows that by the end of the K2 mission, we expect to double or triple the number of relatively small planets orbiting nearby, bright stars,” Crossfield added.
“And because these planets orbit brighter stars, we’ll be able to more easily study everything possible about them, whether it’s measuring their masses with Doppler spectroscopy ... or measuring their atmospheric makeup with the James Webb Space Telescope in just a few years.”
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Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
