NASA’s Kepler probe finds five strange new planets

SAN JOSE, Calif. — In what astronomers called an exciting step toward detecting Earth-like planets, a spacecraft operated by NASA’s Ames Research Center
has found five strange new planets, beginning to reveal how the
structure of our solar system fits into the rest of the universe.

The five planets announced Monday by scientists
working on the Kepler probe are an exotic bunch, one with a density as
light as styrofoam. The large planets orbit so close to their stars
that they may glow with the heat of a blast furnace, as hot as the
melting point of iron.

“It’s certainly no place to look for life,” said Bill Borucki, the principal investigator with the Kepler mission at Ames. “That will be coming later.”

Launched in March, the 2,300-pound spacecraft
detects the transit of a planet across the star’s face. These are the
first new planets found by the probe.

For a smaller Earth-like planet orbiting at a great
enough distance from its star to support life, Kepler will need about
three years of planet transit data — meaning that NASA’s first announcement of finding “other Earths” probably won’t happen before 2012.

While astronomers first detected a planet orbiting
another star in 1995, Kepler has unique abilities that may
revolutionize how astronomers understand the formation and character of
planets. Because of its position in space and its ability to monitor
more than 150,000 stars continuously with great precision, Kepler is
the first instrument able to detect the full range of planets — from
gas giants like Jupiter to rocky terrestrial planets like the Earth and
Mars, and everything in between.

“We’re starting to fill in the picture of the different types of planets in ways that we couldn’t before,” said Jon Jenkins of the SETI Institute, co-investigator for data analysis for the $591 million Kepler mission.

Scientists had thought there were two classes of
planets — terrestrial and gas giants. The new Kepler data, Jenkins
said, hints that intermediate sized planets such as “Neptune and Uranus
form in a different fashion than Jupiters and Saturns. There are finer
distinctions in how these planets form.”

Kepler also had reassuring news for those who worry
about the future of the source of all life on Earth — the sun. It turns
out that a majority of the roughly 43,000 sun-like, “G-class” stars
that Kepler observed are as stable or more stable than the sun.

That is good news for scientists who hope to find
life elsewhere in the galaxy, because it indicates that there are many
stars that might allow a benign environment over the long term for the
evolution of complex life forms.

But it also seems to indicate, astronomers said, that our sun is more likely to remain stable into the future.

“I’m going to sleep better tonight knowing we’re in a good, safe place,” said Caty Pilachowski, an astronomer at Indiana University who reviewed Kepler’s data.

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