New astronomers have a discovery that will surely make everyone excited

They found a new exoplanet (alien planet). But what is special about this? Why are all excited because of it?

According to a study recently published on arXiv, later published by Astronomy and Astrophysics, experts from the University of Geneva (Switzerland) have made an extremely unexpected discovery of exoplanets (planets). outside the solar system - or exoplanets).

Specifically, astronomer Helen Giles - the study author has found a new planet, named EPIC248847494b , located 1800 light years away. But finding a new planet - even if it is exoplanet and has the potential to nurture life - is it not uncommon? Why does it make everyone feel excited?

This is this reason!

We have quite a few ways to find a new planet, such as observing the light of a star being shaken by the gravity of something nearby. However, the most common way is to watch light blink when the planet passes (also known as the transit method).

Until now, this is the most successful method with the achievement of thousands of planets (mainly discovered by NASA's Kepler). However, the problem is that you have to observe at least three such flashes to confirm the presence of a planet.

If it's a small orbiting planet, it's simple, sometimes only a few days, or weeks. But for a planet with a larger orbit, it takes a whole year, even a few years to go through a cycle, is obviously very time consuming. The result is obvious among the thousands of planets found, most have short trajectories.

The new planet, named EPIC248847494b, is 1800 light years away.

Short trajectories are, of course, too close to the star, too much heat radiation must be received, making the planet's surface too hot to sustain life. If it is a dwarf - cold and smaller than regular stars - the temperature may be acceptable, but the radiation waves are too strong, causing the atmosphere to evaporate.

In short, with planets with short orbits , maintaining life is almost impossible. Calculation models also show that only planets revolve around true stars such as the Sun, and at a distance as far as Earth (ie, a large orbit) are able to nurture life.

And this is why the discovery of EPIC248847494b excited everyone. It is a long orbiting planet, but experts can confirm its existence only once.

But how? Simply when searching Kepler's data, they noticed a relay signal for a long time. Then just follow that signal and confirm it, saving half the time.

"Normally to find an extraterrestrial planet, it takes at least three transitions to determine, and must create an automatic software to update into it," Giles said.

"But my way is to rummage through the thousands of light waves recorded in the data. And this is a completely manual way - that is, we see with the naked eye."

This method is expected to have a great effect. Not only does it help shorten the time to find planets, but also to find more, and increase the chance of finding a planet like ours.

TESS satellite.

According to Giles, EPIC248847494b is the first long-orbit-like planet to be found only once. It takes up to 10 years for this planet to go all the way around the star - the longest of the same planets. If using the conventional method, it will take 30 years to confirm its existence.

The report said EPIC248847494b is a gas planet, slightly larger than Jupiter. It has orbits around the host star at a distance of 4.5 AU (1 AU = distance from Earth to the Sun). However, why the master of this planet is a giant star, EPIC248847494b still seems to be in a region capable of nurturing life (though it is essentially impossible because it is a planetary planet).

"The usual transit method almost never finds a planet with a long orbit like this. So this is a very respectable finding," Giles said excitedly.

In particular, the new method will be an especially important addition to TESS - a new planetary planetary search satellite launched in 4/2018. With the scope of observing 85% of the sky, TESS is expected to find about 20,000 new planets.

According to Dr. John Mather, NASA's James Webb telescope expert, he agrees.

"We can identify more single signals that need attention from the universe than before," Mather said.

"Earth-like planets will probably only generate a single signal. If we pay attention, we will get something really big."

In addition, although EPIC248847494b is just a planetary planet, according to some recent studies, planets have moons (known as exomoon-moon). If EPIC248847494b is in the area that nourishes life, it is likely that its moon is the same, and probably the right place to find life.

In short, we have a new way to find planets that are faster, more efficient, and especially likely to find aliens.