Summary
A specialized team consisting of planet hunters led by the astronomers at the University of California and the Carnegie Institution of Washington have discovered an earth sized planet (three times the size of earth) orbiting a close by star. The discovered planet is in the middle of the planets "habitable zone" where H2O can exist on the planets surface. If authenticated, this planet can be the first potential planet that humans could actually survive on. To astronomers a habitable planet would be a planet that could actually sustain life, not necessarily a planet that could be lived on. These finding were based on the 11 years of observations at the observatory in Hawaii. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institutions stated the following, "Our ability to find potentially habitable worlds is now limited only by our telescope time." This newly invention will yet be released in public also including many minor names that contributed to this miraculous discovery. It all started when two planets were found around the dwarf star Gliese 581. This improved the number to six orbiting planets which is the second largest system after ours. The most interesting planet, Gliese 581g is three times the mass of earth and as Vogt stated, enough gravity to hold down an atmosphere. This incredible planet is 20 light years away from earth and had practicably enough characteristics as earth. "We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone--one too hot and one too cold--and now we have one in the middle that's just right," Vogt said. This planet is also locked to the star meaning that the planet does not rotate, therefore, one side is always exposed to light and the other is always exposed to darkness. The planets temperatures range from -31 C - -12 C. In one side, its gets really hot while on the other it gets really chilling and cold. It was a really challenging job to find this incredible planet but the researchers are fascinated on how fast they found Gliese 581. Plus, according to the percentages, they have come to an conclusion that there are possibly billions of planets that have the same attributes. Once again, this planet was really special and many researchers and astronomers hope this planet can actually sustain life. This project was financed by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
In conclusion, there are many other planets to be discovered and finally some day, we hope we will be able to take the human civilization and transfer it to another planet.
Reflection
In my opinion, this article was very useful for developing my knowledge and it made the memories from the astrology unit. Firstly, I learned how hard planet hunters work. They never accept breaks and try to discover planets for 24 hours. There hard work payed off with this event and now we possibly have a habitable planet. I also learned a lot about habitable planets and there aspects. Now I know what type of planet is a habitable one and how it becomes a habitable planet. As I said earlier, this project also brought back memories from the astronomy unit. I now know more about the atmosphere and gravity a planet holds and more about the core of the planet. This article mostly connects to the astronomy unit and I personally think it would help students understand planets a little bit better.
In conclusion, I want to state that this article really helped my mind develop and become stronger. I also hope this planet will become a new earth!
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