MEXICO: Recently, NASA announced the discovery of exoplanet Kepler 452b, which has since then been dubbed “Earth’s older cousin.” This is a momentous announcement for many space fans, but I want to help explain why a rock floating 1,400 light-years away nestled in the Cyngus constellation is a big deal for all of us.
Kepler is a spacecraft named after Johannes Kepler – the scientist who discovered the laws of planetary motion – that is currently orbiting the sun with the mission to observe other star clusters in search of Earth-like planetary candidates. Launched in 2009, The Kepler Space Observatory has had its ups and downs due to hardware failure, but in short, the spacecraft has been staring at stars in our galaxy in search for exoplanets. It is looking for planets that fall inside the “Goldilocks Zone” – circumstellar habitable zones, which, in this case, would be areas in which planets orbiting a star would have liquids pooling on the surface, just like Earth (you know, places where everything is just right).
How does a space observatory orbiting our sun discover planets orbiting stars that are just small dots off in the distance? It’s pretty radical actually. The telescope focuses on a cluster of stars and observes them over the span of a few years – or in this case since 2009. As it observes the stars, it records the brightness of the light given off. What it is looking for is drops in brightness as planets transition in front of that star. They then wait for the planet to transition again to remove any doubts of passing celestial bodies. After a year, you know how long it takes for the planet to orbit, and the change in the stars’ brightness lets scientists determine the size, position, and orbit of the planet.
Here’s another explanation. Turn on a flash light and point it at a wall. If you bounce a ball in front of that flashlight, the light on the wall will dim slightly as the ball passes the beam of light. If you compared the light value of those two states, you can science your way to knowing the size of the ball.
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