6. Extrasolar Planets
NASA’s Kepler Mission – a quest to identify extrasolar planets in their respective stars’ habitable zone – is changing the way we think about the universe in near real time. Over the last few months, the team has announced another major discovery roughly as often as the recycling is picked up. In September, Kepler-16b became the first planet known to orbit a binary star (a “circumbinary planet” for you Scrabble fans out there). In October and November, additional planets were announced, but they were too hot or too large to earn the “Earth-like” designation.
In December, however, Kepler-22b was unveiled as the first Earth-like planet with the thermal characteristics amenable to liquid water. Two additional Earth-sized objects were announced the next week. (Though, having been enveloped by the red-giant phase of their host star, these planets are probably just charred remains.)
Just in case you thought the mission has already run its course, there’s a little tab on the Kepler mission’s website that keeps score of the mission’s progress. As of now, 61 planets have been confirmed, while 2,326 are in taxonomical limbo as “candidate planets.” Of course, given the frenetic pace of the mission, both of those numbers will probably change by the time I finish this sentence.
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Those are the key stories I’m looking forward to this year; did I miss anything big? What else is going to be inspiring people, advancing science, and racking up the YouTube hits over the next 11 months?
Image: An artist’s conception of Kepler 22b. (NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech)