Three new chances for life out there

Seven new exoplanets were discovered several weeks ago by a Belgian team of astronomers in the Atacama desert in Chile. These discoveries were made with the help of NASA telescopes but were not first discovered by NASA.

The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) was used to discover the incredibly cool dwarf star named Trappist-1. This star is right in our backyard, being only 40 light years away.

According to Jerome Fang, an astronomy instructor at Orange Coast College, the discovery was made when the planets orbiting Trappist-1 passed in front of it.

“So these are seven planets found around the star, Trappist-1. They were detected by watching the star they go around. They can actually see the planets go in front of the star, and that makes the star slightly dimmer,” Fang said.

All the planets orbiting this star are similar to Earth in size and mass, experts say. Only three of them are the right distance from Trappist-1 which makes them likely to have water, spelling the potential for life in the Trappist-1 system.

“These planets are all similar to the Earth in terms of how big they are, how much mass they have. And three of them are, yes, they’re the right distance from the star that they could have liquid water on the surface, which makes them maybe habitable,” Fang said.

The reason this discovery is so important is because this is the largest number of temperate, Earth-sized planets that have been discovered to date. The Trappist-1 system, while it has many differences, is very similar to our solar system.

“I guess the unusual thing with that is that there are seven Earth-like planets. Most of them will tend to be a little larger, and not that they haven’t found a few that are sort of similar to the Earth in size, mass, maybe. But seven in one system is pretty unusual I’d say,” Nicholas Contopoulos, an astronomy instructor at OCC said.

One big difference is that all seven planets orbit very close to their star, all closer than Mercury orbits the sun. The reason three of them are still theorized to have water and be hospitable for life is because the planets all orbit an incredibly cool dwarf star.

The TRAPPIST-1 planets are snuggled close enough to their dim, red star to potentially have liquid water on their surfaces.

ILLUSTRATION BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH

Today, astronomers aren’t sure if these planets have water. They aren’t sure if the radiation from Trappist-1 has stripped the planets of their atmospheres, or if this star is still relatively young and hasn’t stripped much of the planets’ atmospheres.

“We don’t actually know definitively what’s on the surface because we can’t tell. We hope that the composition of these planets is similar to the Earth’s. We think they’re rocky. That’s about all we can say. Beyond that we can’t say if there’s an atmosphere, I don’t think we know that. We can’t say that they have moons because moons are impossible to find. Just bare-boned, we kind of know they’re like the Earth,” Fang said.

Despite all these advances and discoveries in the field of astronomy, financial support toward the sciences is being cut from the federal budget.

“They’re certainly withdrawing funds from science related content, like EPA is going to be defunded. Basically the military is going up $54 billion so they’re going to find the money somewhere. So I think they’re just taking it from things that they don’t feel are necessary,” Contopoulos said.

Some instructors believe that NASA is too important to continue to cut from the federal budget.

“Studying astronomy with NASA and all that is giving us a sense of perspective, like how do we fit into this crazy thing we call the universe. It puts into perspective maybe the issues we deal with. I talk to students and they tell me, ‘hey, our problems don’t seem so big when we study things that are out there.’ A lot of the greatest successes in NASA is because we put in the money. So if we’re taking away money that just makes the chances of doing something great and amazing even less likely,” Fang said.

Recently private industry is filling in the gaps where NASA isn’t able to from a lack of funding. SpaceX announced recently that it will send two private citizens on a trip around the moon before the end of next year. Its CEO, Elon Musk, has even discussed plans to colonize Mars in the future.

“I guess what’s different this time is you’re looking at private industry doing a lot, not that it didn’t do that before, but it’s not just NASA anymore. It’s sort of more private industry, where before NASA was sort of the head,” Contopoulos said.

Although the astrophysics as an industry isn’t as popular as it used to be, some students claim that the industry is expected to pick up in the near future.

“If anything, the space engineering industry is growing and it’s about to experience a really big boom probably within the next 10 years,” Garrett Prechel, a 30-year-old physics major said.

OCC’s Astronomy Club is filled with students of all majors ranging from physics and astronomy to even art and childhood education. The students, however, have the same positive sentiment toward astrophysics.

“It is concerning to have a government that doesn’t support it but at the same time you can’t rely on them for everything. Things will change eventually. The work has a lot more meaning than some people telling you that it’s not worth funding,” Junell Brown, an 18-year-old astrophysics major said

One faculty adviser to the club stresses the importance of advancing in the realm of science and  continuing to learn about the world in a scientific manner.

“Anytime a country or a civilization diminishes the curious component, you endanger the strength of that civilization because that’s kind of what drives this curiosity. You’re trying to find your place in the cosmos. By understanding that and the fundamentals, we can better understand our purpose. We don’t have all the answers, and we definitely need science to push a civilization forward. If you diminish that you’re kind of cutting yourself at the legs, and just going, ‘well, things will just work out.’ Well they don’t, and I think that’s a dangerous path,” Contopoulos said.