Pluto may be out a full-fledged member of the planet pack, but NASA officials said they’ve discovered two new planets for the first time outside our solar system.
The two new worlds circling a nearby star are hot and gassy so incapable of sustaining life as we know it. While the discovery isn’t terribly exciting for alien hunters, the science that allowed the discovery is pretty exciting.
Scientists confirmed the discovery using the transit timing method to capture radial velocity observations conducted at the W.M Keck Observatory in Hawaii. This is the first time scientists have found two planets in a system around the the same star.
William Borucki, the principal investigator for NASA’s Kepler program which made the discovery, says the transit timing method used will allow scientists to find even Earth-sized planets. Right now, most exoplanets are the size of Jupiter or larger. The two new planets are about 3-4 times the size of Earth and rotate around their sun every 19 and 38 days, respectively.
“We’re announcing the discovery of two Saturn-size planets, which we’re calling Kepler 9B and Kepler 9C,” Holman said. And there’s evidence of a third planet, he said — a much smaller one. Its diameter appears to be just 50 percent larger than Earth’s. If it is confirmed, it would have a radius of about 1.5 times the radius of Earth.” — Matthew Holman, scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
