Five planets similar to the size of Earth were spotted this week by the Kepler space telescope, and by scientists’ estimates, these planets are about 80 percent as old as the universe is.
The exoplanets orbit around the 11.2 billion year old Kepler-444 star that’s some 25 percent smaller than the sun in our solar system. The planets are said to be rocky, as they are supposedly Venus-size or smaller, though that’s all researchers currently know about their composition. All five of them orbit around Kepler-444 in less than ten days, so that would also exclude the possibility of life in these planets.
Still, scientists believe that the presence of Kepler-444 suggests there may be some ancient solar systems that could support life in some form, or come close to it. “We now know that Earth-sized planets have formed throughout most of the universe’s 13.8-billion-year history, which could provide scope for the existence of ancient life in the galaxy,” said lead researcher Tiago Campante of the University of Birmingham in England.
Fellow researcher Daniel Huber from the University of Sydney’s School of Physics added that the team had “never seen anything like this,” a “special” solar system due to the high number of small planets orbiting around Kepler-444.
Huber also explained in the researchers’ statement how the Kepler telescope can detect changes in brightness that are caused by sound waves; these result in changes in temperature, and the study of these sound waves as they relate to stars is known as asteroseismology. This study can assist researchers in finding out a star’s size, mass, and age.
“When asteroseismology emerged about two decades ago, we could only use it on the sun and a few bright stars, but thanks to Kepler, we can now apply the technique to literally thousands of stars,” he said, adding that the smallest of the five planets spotted is only a tad larger than Mercury.