EXOPLANETS - SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
News: James
Webb telescope discovers its first Earth-sized exoplanet: What are exoplanets?
What's in the news?
● The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on January 11 announced
that the James Webb Space Telescope has discovered its first new exoplanet - LHS 475 b.
● Researchers
hope that in the coming years, owing to the Webb telescope’s advanced
capabilities, they will be able to detect more Earth-sized planets.
LHS 475 b:
● It
is located 41 light-years away from the earth.
● The
exoplanet orbits very close to a red dwarf
star and completes a full orbit in just two days.
Exoplanets:
● Exoplanets are planets
that orbit other stars and are beyond our solar system.
● Exoplanets
come in a host of different sizes. They can be gas giants bigger than Jupiter
or as small and rocky as Earth. They are also known to have different kinds of
temperatures - boiling hot to freezing cold.
● According
to NASA, to date, more than 5,000
exoplanets have been discovered.
● Scientists
believe that there are more planets than stars as each star has at least one
planet orbiting it.
● So
far, most of the discovered exoplanets are similar to Jupiter as Earth-sized
planets are much smaller in size and harder to discover with older telescopes.
Importance of studying exoplanets:
● Broadens
our understanding of other solar systems and also helps us piece together information about our own planetary system
and origin.
● Finding
out the distance between an exoplanet and its host star. This helps scientists
determine if a discovered world is habitable or not.
○ If
an exoplanet is too close to the star, it might be too hot to sustain liquid
water.
○ If
it’s too far, it might only have frozen water.
○ When
a planet is at a distance that enables it to have liquid water, it is said to
be in the “Goldilocks zone”.