For the next three days, Hua Feng stayed alone in the archives to summarize the information of terrestrial planets.

Of the more than 170 planets that have been discovered, only 5 are smaller than the newly discovered planet. Astronomers used the HARPS system and the telescope of the Northern Chilean Astronomical Observatory to observe the planet.

European astronomers also explained that the planet was discovered in an area of six million kilometers from the red dwarf star G1 581, and its surface temperature was about 150°C. For comparison, Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun in the solar system, is 58 million kilometers away from the Sun, and it takes 88 days to revolve around the Sun.

In January 6, 2015, astronomers issued a statement saying that theoretically, they had identified three to four more animals that were almost the same size as the Earth and were in the "habitable zone" (Goldilocks Zo).

e) of the planet, which means that there may be liquid water on it.

These planets may not be gas giants nor covered in snow and ice, but rocky planets like Earth. The latest NASA results show that the planets get about the same amount of heat from their stars as we get from the sun.

But that doesn't mean they can be another Earth. They may be similar in size and temperature to Earth, but that's far from a comfortable environment.

Guillermo Torris, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that if the two closest planets to Earth are the example, if they have an atmosphere similar to that of Earth, the temperature of one planet will reach about 60 degrees Celsius, while the other will remain at -18 degrees Celsius. Torris says life may evolve to adapt to these temperatures. But they are 500 light-years away and 1,100 light-years away, respectively, and one light-year is 9,460.5 billion kilometers, which is too far for the Earth.

But Douglas Caldwell, an astronomer at the Institute for the Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations (SETI), believes that the key to the discovery is that astronomers are one step closer to discovering Earth's twin planet. Torris also said: "These planets do exist. We didn't know that before. What we're ultimately looking for is signs of life. We're not there yet, it will take many years, but now the first steps have been taken. ”

Torris' team confirmed that, to date, a total of 8 to 9 planets about the size of the Earth and in the habitable temperature zone have been discovered. But this is only the discovery of a close search of a small part of the Milky Way, so Torris believes that there are many more terrestrial planets in the entire universe waiting to be discovered.

On August 15, 2016, according to foreign media reports, astronomy is making a major discovery! Scientists may announce the discovery of a planet "similar to the Earth" in the Milky Way at the end of August. It is said that there is a possibility of life on this planet, and this "Earth" is much closer than the last discovered "Earth close relative".

According to reports, the surface of the new planet "may have liquid water, and liquid water is an important condition for life". NASA has repeatedly announced the discovery of new planets. However, some of the newly discovered planets are mostly too hot or too cold to hold liquid water on their surfaces, while others are gaseous planets like Jupiter and Neptune, unlike Earth or Mars, which are made of rock.

At 2 a.m. Beijing time on February 23, 2017, NASA held a press conference at its headquarters, announcing the discovery of as many as 7 exoplanets close to the Earth around a close-range small-mass star, and these planets are very close to each other, basically located in the habitable zone around the star, so there is theoretically possible atmosphere and ocean, which makes people full of reverie about the possibility of life.

The discovery suggests that a system of small rocky planets crammed together like a Russian bowl could be quite common, and that it could be the best destination for searching for extraterrestrial life in the Milky Way.

NASA expects to launch a small sundial in 2014 to highlight planets by blocking the light of stars, Charles Beckman, a scientist at the TPF project, said on April 28, 2004. By 2019, the United States will work with the European Space Agency to launch a free-flying interferometer.

This will be a pair of two celestial telescopes that strictly adhere to a distance of one football field apart, using zero-signal interferometry, the signals of the two celestial telescopes are combined, the signal peaks are superimposed with the signal troughs, and the bright stars are removed from the image, and the light reflected by the planets revolving around the star can pass through the telescope's optical system in different paths, leaving traces on the image.

As far as observations are concerned, there are 3 stars in the vicinity of the solar system, Beta Picto

is), Epsilo

Space telescopes in search of terrestrial planets Space telescopes in search of terrestrial planets [2] E

ida

i) and Vega both have the potential to have another solar system of terrestrial planets.

The free-flying interferometer, the soon-to-be-launched Spitzer and James Webb space telescopes, and the Kepler Space Telescope for Planetary Exploration will be able to scan thousands of distant stars and spot planets just a few times larger than Earth around several stars in the nearby solar system. But that's not enough.

All of these instruments are preparations for the Terrestrial Planet Seeker (TPF), which is planned to be launched in 2014 and TPF-I, two terrestrial planet seekers planned to be launched in 2018, which will increase the resolution achieved by the Hubble Telescope by a factor of 100, and through joint observations in the infrared and visible wavelength ranges, it will have the ability to discover terrestrial planets and detect the chemical composition of planets' atmospheres. If TPF can find signs of life in terrestrial planets, NASA will apply for more powerful telescopes after 2020 to confirm and photograph the planet's life signatures.

What can we find in that distant place? Bruce Jaksky, chief scientist at the University of Colorado's Astrobiology Laboratory, told Oriental Weekly that to find a planet that can support life like Earth, liquid water or other forms of liquids are the basic conditions, such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, calcium, iron and other substances, which are easy to find on any geologically active planet. Another necessary condition is the chemical imbalance, the existence of this imbalance, and the constant effort to restore the equilibrium provide the energy necessary for metabolism.

Some scientists say that life on Earth is based on carbon, and life forms based on silicon, a carbon congener, are also possible. Seth Shostark, a senior scientist of the "Phoenix Project", believes that from the perspective of the outer electronic structure of silicon, it does have four free electrons unique to carbon, but the atomic weight of silicon is large, and the silicon-oxygen covalent bond is relatively fragile, so it cannot combine organic macromolecules like carbon, so it cannot be used as the basis of life.

He said that life is made up of organization, function, and precise reproduction, and that the core of it is the transmission of information, and it cannot be ruled out that it may form other forms of chemical mechanisms according to the behavior of electrons.

So will aliens be like in the movie, with green skin and relying on photosynthesis to survive, Seth said, using the photosynthesis of the skin, the alien's utilization rate of energy only reaches 8% Even if they are exposed to the sun every day, they can't meet their own energy needs, and the energy needed for a day needs 3 weeks to reserve. Therefore, it is not possible for aliens to survive by photosynthesis, or is it more direct and effective to obtain energy by eating green plants.

An international research team, including scientists from 12 countries, including France, reported in the British journal Nature published on the 26th that they used a technology called gravitational microlensing to detect a new terrestrial planet, which is the smallest terrestrial planet ever discovered by humans outside the solar system.

When a planet or star moves in front of another distant star, the object in front sometimes acts like a "lens" to magnify the distant object behind it, making it brighter to the observer, which is known as the "gravitational lensing" effect. Scientists have recently used this phenomenon to develop a new technology for detecting unknown planets, gravitational microlensing.

The search for planets similar to Earth is an important topic for the exploration of extraterrestrial life. Previously, scientists have discovered more than 170 terrestrial planets using traditional planetary detection techniques, but due to technological limitations, the terrestrial planets discovered at that time were often larger, and the smallest planets were about 7 times the mass of the Earth.

An international team of researchers, led by scientists from the French Institute of Astrophysics, has discovered an even smaller planet using gravitational microlensing. The planet, named OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, is located 28,000 light-years from Earth and has a mass about 5.5 times that of Earth.

Scientists say the newly discovered planet orbits a brown dwarf star at a distance about 2.6 times the distance between the Sun and Earth. However, due to the low radiation energy of the brown dwarf, the temperature on the planet's surface is only about -220°C, which is absolutely unsuitable for life.

Scientists hope that gravitational microlensing technology will be used to detect more terrestrial planets with smaller masses in the future.

- There may be water temperature that is also suitable for human habitation

For the first time, an observing team of 11 European astronomers has discovered a potentially habitable planet outside our solar system. The planet has a similar temperature to Earth. Scientists described the discovery as a big step in the "search for life in the universe."

The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The planet is the right size and may have liquid water. Conceptually, the Milky Way is relatively close to Earth, 12 trillion miles away. However, the star around which the planet orbits is a "red dwarf", which is much smaller, darker and colder than the Sun.

There is still much to be said about this newly discovered planet, but for the first time, there is a planet outside the solar system that meets astronomers' requirements for a planet suitable for human habitation: relatively Earth-like in size, and the temperature allows for the presence of liquid water.

The results of this discovery have not yet been published, but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.