Kepler-62f: A Potential Water World

May 30, 2016 admin Tech Comments Off on Kepler-62f: A Potential Water World
The artist's conception depicts Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The small shining object seen to the right of Kepler-62f is Kepler-62e.
Kepler-62f is doubtlessly an Earth-like planet about 1,200 light-years from our planet. The world is just one.four occasions larger than Earth and is in orbit round a star that’s considerably dimmer and smaller than the solar. It orbits in what’s believed to be the liveable area of its star.

The planet was introduced in 2013 as half of a bigger discovery of seven exoplanets introduced across the stars Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. One other notable discovery on the identical time was Kepler-62e, which can be near Earth’s measurement (at 1.6 occasions the radius) and within the liveable zone.

Individually, a modeling research of Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f recommended that the planets would possible be engulfed in water, which may result in life that may be very completely different than our personal.

This diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-62, a five-planet system about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The five planets of Kepler-62 orbit a star classified as a K2 dwarf, measuring just two thirds the size of the sun and only one fifth as bright.
Credit score: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech.

“There could also be life there, however may or not it’s technology-based like ours? Life on these worlds could be underneath water with no quick access to metals, to electrical energy, or fireplace for metallurgy,” modeling lead creator Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard-Smithsonian Middle for Astrophysics, stated in an announcement in 2013.

“Nonetheless, these worlds will nonetheless be lovely blue planets circling an orange star — and possibly life’s inventiveness to get to a know-how stage will shock us,” she added.