The European Southern Observatory has announced the discovery of over 50 new exoplanets. According to the observatory, one of these new planets has the right conditions for life.
The term "exoplanets" is used by astronomers in reference to bodies lying outside our solar system.
The planets were discovered with the Observatory's High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher or HARPS, in Chile. The ESO, which describes its HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6 metre telescope at Las Silla Observatory in Chile, as the world's most successful planet finder, quotes the leader of the HARPS team, Michel Mayor saying,
The harvest of discoveries from HARPS has exceeded all expectations and includes an exceptionally rich population of super-Earths and Neptune-type planets hosted by stars very similar to our Sun. And even better — the new results show that the pace of discovery is accelerating.
According to European Southern Observatory, 16 of the fifty planets may be "super-Earths" with masses 1 to 10 times greater than that of the planet Earth. The planet HD 85512 which is of special interest to the astronomers is about 35 light years from Earth and is estimated to be about 3.6 times the size of the planet Earth. According to the report, the planet's location places it in what is termed the "Goldilocks zone," that is, a distance from its star in which temperature allows for liquid water to be found on the planet.
According to Michel Mayor, leader of the HARPS team,
In the coming 10 to 20 years we should have the first list of potentially habitable planets in the Sun's neighbourhood. Making such a list is essential before future experiments can search for possible spectroscopic signatures of life in the exoplanet atmospheres
The new discoveries bring the total number of planets astronomers have discovered outside our solar system close to 600. According to the ESO, the new findings are being presented at a conference on Extreme Solar Systems where 350 exoplanet experts are meeting in Wyoming, USA.
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