Friday, February 4, 2011

NASA discovers more planets outside solar system

 

New Delhi: NASA has found out more planets are two thousand light years away. We won't get there in our lifetimes. They're much larger than Earth, but need just a few days or months to complete an orbit. Which means they're closer to their star than Mercury is to our sun.
Planetary Scientist, Kepler Science Jack Lissauer says, "This is the most compact system of planets discovered by any technique, anywhere."
Kepler, NASA's space based telescope launched just two years ago has found more than one thousand two hundred planets outside our solar system so far.
The stars around us have a huge number of planets and candidates to look at. If we find that planets like earth are common, it very likely means that life is common around these stars.
A European team found a planet last year that is just twenty years away. It could support life. But it is unlikely that an intelligent alien is trying to contact us. After years of listening to radio signals, scientists haven't got a single message.