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A team of astronomers have discovered a system of three Earth-like exoplanets orbiting a small star that is only 40 light-years away from Earth, that are considered good candidates for supporting life.

The star in question, an ultracool dwarf called TRAPPIST-1, is only a bit bigger than Jupiter, and only emits approximately one two-hundredths of the output of our Sun, making it too faint to see with the naked eye. The planets in question, however, orbit very close to the star, allowing them to gather enough light from the star to keep warm. Because of their extremely close orbits, the planets orbit TRAPPIST-1 extremely quickly: the innermost planet takes 1.5 Earth days for a single revolution, and the second planet’s year is only 2.4 days.
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Since March of 2009, the Kepler Space Observatory has been exploring our region of the Milky Way so that scientists at NASA can discover more Earth-like planets orbiting stars and estimate how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy actually have such planets. Data from Kepler is analyzed using a supercomputer running algorithms at NASA’s Ames facility.

Now computations from K2, the extended Kepler space telescope mission, indicate the existence of three new Earth-size planets. The one in the CHZ of its star was given the evocative name, EPIC 201367075. The CHZ – or circumstellar habitable zone – is where planets with sufficient atmospheric pressure can support liquid water on their surface.
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In 1930, Albert Einstein was asked for his opinion about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. “Other beings, perhaps, but not men,” he answered. Then he was asked whether science and religion conflict. “Not really, though it depends, of course, on your religious views.”

Over the past 10 years, astronomers’ new ability to detect planets orbiting other stars has taken this question out of the realm of philosophy, as it was for Einstein, and transformed it into something that scientists might soon be able to answer.
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Astronomers have made some very interesting discoveries in space recently, each potentially bringing them one step closer to finding habitable exo-planets with signs of extra-terrestrial life-forms.

A study appearing this week in the journal Nature revealed findings extracted from the combined offerings of three NASA space telescopes: Hubble, Spitzer, and Kepler. Data from the telescopes showed clear skies and steamy water vapor on a gaseous planet outside our solar system.
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