![]() ![]() ![]() The team used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space telescope to scan several spots across multiple galaxies, all in a quest to locate a planet outside the Milky Way. X-ray observations allowed the researchers to see the objects transiting stars farther away in space. This exoplanet candidate, called M51-ULS-1b, was spotted by scientists who were looking for dips of X-ray brightness instead of changes in optical light. Astronomers use spacecraft like TESS to find alien worlds this way.īut astronomers put a twist to this method to find the potentially-supergalactic world. The faint periods often indicate that a planet is passing in front of the star's face, at least from our perspective on Earth. “To my thinking, it is inevitable that we’ll find some kind of life somewhere – most likely of some primitive kind,” he said.One typically-used technique to detect exoplanets is the transit method, in which scientists look for dips in a star's optical brightness. With this continued exploration, it is likely scientists will discover signs of life on other planets eventually, said Alexander Wolszczan, who was the lead author on the paper 30 years ago describing the first exoplanets, in a statement as part of NASA's announcement. Meanwhile, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launched in 2018, is continuing NASA's hunt for new planets and the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in December 2021, will help tell whether some planets are habitable. New space missions including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which NASA expects to launch no later than 2027, has been designed to find new exoplanets, and The European Space Agency's Ariel Space Mission, scheduled to launch in 2029, will study exoplanet atmospheres and carries a NASA instrument to investigate exoplanet atmospheres. What's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day “I get a real feeling of satisfaction, and really of awe at what’s out there,” said astronomer William Borucki, who came up with the idea for the Kepler Space Telescope, in a statement. “None of us expected this enormous variety of planetary systems and stars. I feel like I've had a front row seat to this new field being born and then also becoming part of it," said Natalie Batalha, an astrophysicist at NASA Ames Research Center near Mountain View, California, in a NASA interview posted on Twitter and YouTube.Īmong other interesting finds, scientists using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile discovered an exoplanet – called either b Centauri (AB)b or b Centauri b – 10 times as massive as Jupiter orbiting a pair of stars in another solar system 325 light-years from Earth.īack in 2020, NASA also found an Earth-like planet among the exoplanets discovered using observations from the Kepler Space Telescope. "When I started research, there were no known #exoplanets. What about the United States?Īlso found: “super-Earths,” similar to but bigger than our planet, and even the planet Kepler-16b, which is similar to Tatooine, the home of Luke Skywalker in the "Star Wars" films, in that it orbits two stars. Happiest countries in the world: Europe dominated the list. Russian cyberattacks: Biden warns Americans at high risk after Ukraine invasion: What you should do right now ![]() Since the first exoplanet – the term for a planet found outside our solar system – was discovered in 1995, scientists have found a variety of planets including "small, rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and 'hot Jupiters' in scorchingly close orbits around their stars," NASA said in its announcement of the milestone on Monday. I get excited about every one because we don’t know anything about them.” “Each one of them is a new world, a brand-new planet. “It’s not just a number,” said Jessie Christiansen, a research scientist with the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech in Pasadena, in the announcement of the milestone on Monday. As space telescopes become more advanced, scientists will find more planets – and learn more about those already discovered. The Kepler Space Telescope, launched in 2009 and retired in 2018, led to the discovery of more than 2,600 planets. Scientists have now found more than 5,000 planets existing beyond our solar system, NASA has announced. The universe is officially crowded with plenty of strange, new worlds to explore. With new investigative tools such as the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists hope to learn whether some planets are habitable.These exoplanets, so called because they are beyond our galaxy, have a variety of types.More than 5,000 planets are now confirmed to exist beyond our solar system, NASA says. ![]()
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