Gadgetory

tonight the hunt for exoplanets planets just like ours orbiting stars in a different solar system where are they hiding can they support life and what exactly can we move there because we've screwed up this planet and I want to leave I'm Claire Riley welcome to watch this space from the CNET studios in Sydney this is your weekly guide to everything on earth you need to know about space and tonight we're all alone in the universe or are we well probably but maybe not that's right we're on the hunt for exoplanets and we're not going to stop looking under the giant intergalactic couch till we found all of them exoplanets are like regular planets but they exist outside our solar system orbiting around their own stars they're also called extrasolar planets cuz just like your friend who turns up to every birthday party in a different lurex jumpsuit they're just a little bit extra we've known about exoplanets for decades and we had our first confirmed discovery of one in 1995 since then our exoplanet hunt has been going off like a frog in a sock according to NASA we've had more than 3,700 confirmed discoveries of exoplanets in just a couple of decades with a further 2,900 potential candidate planets that are still unconfirmed there could be a good match but scientists still haven't swiped right on them yet in total we've discovered more than 2,800 planetary systems stars that have their own planets just hanging out nearby just like the planets in our own solar system they're all really different some of them might have rings like Saturn others could have water some of them are massive and some are close in size to earth and then there's planets like HD 1 8 973 3 B where it rains glass sideways and which wikipedia has called a hot Jupiter with poor prospects for extraterrestrial life that's right the popular girl at your Halloween party isn't the only one trying to be a hot Jupiter this year and speaking of HD one eight nine seven three three B let's talk about those names exoplanet names sound like they're pools from the world's most boring index card catalog or from your uncle's Star Trek fanfic yeah I'm looking at you dragger so why the weird names well because if we left it to an Internet the public would probably try to name them all Pluto mcpoot o face or mr. starry pants so the International Astronomical Union has created a naming convention to help sort those thousands of exoplanets out some are named after their style like 51 pegasi B or the astronomer that catalogs them like Gliese 581 named after German astronomer William Gleason and then there are those named after the instrument that found them like noted super earth Kepler 440 B what's that you've heard of Kepler I thought you might say that that brings us to this week's edition of Kepler I hardly knew it over to you Claire that's right Claire Kepler is something of a superstar in the exoplanet hunting game launched in 2009 and named after 17th century astronomy bad boy Johann Kepler the spacecraft's mission is to find what NASA calls earth analogs planets similar to our own orbiting a star like our Sun since blasting off almost a decade ago Kepler has found more than 2600 exoplanets and almost 3000 exoplanet candidates so how does it find them well it looks for dips in a star's brightness that kind of dimming could indicate that a planet is passing between Kepler and the star and that could be a sign of an orbiting exoplanet Kepler is equipped with a ninety five megapixel camera array that's the largest camera ever launched into space according to NASA and it's telescope is so powerful that even from space it could detect a single porch light turning off at night back to you in the studio Claire thanks Claire I think I'll be leaving my porch lights on tonight there have been a whole raft of instruments that have helped us find exoplanets from telescopes here on earth to the Hubble telescope and even the new transiting exoplanet survey satellite or Tess Tess only began science operations in July 2018 but Kepler has been in action for years and it's big focus has been on finding earth-like planets in the so-called habitable zone this is the orbital distance around a star where the conditions and temperatures are just right for life it's also known as the Goldilocks zone the Goldilocks zone is far enough from the Sun so it's not true hard but close enough so it's not true cold the temperature has to be just right for liquid water to exist on the surface of the planet and not turn into terrifying sideways glass rain cut to b-roll it took about a billion years for life to appear after earth was formed so these exoplanets can't be little baby things that means Goldilocks is gonna have to grow up a bit before she'll be able to grow any microscopic bacteria or algal slims one day Goldilocks one day either way Kepler could be the key to finding our planets long-lost cousin our earth from another birth if you will but Kepler might not be around for long the spacecraft was originally slated to run out of fuel in 2018 and NASA doesn't know how much it has left it's been in and out of hibernation going into sleep mode to conserve fuel so it can use its last remaining energy to send that crucial observational data when Kepler does die and slip off into the great beyond our search for exoplanets won't be over we'll still have tests to help us find weird and wonderful new worlds all right that's it for this week's episode of watch this space if you've enjoyed the show then be sure to click the like button on your remote and subscribe for more space news as it happens I'm Claire i'li for Senate goodnight and Godspeed what's wrong with my voice oh bad kind of dimming nobody likes me because I'm so far away from the Sun don't come near us cold planet this week's edition of Kepler get one up here nine to five and now for some science I prepared earlier so Dan you stick on some little cardboard buttons and a nice hat and I I went to university for 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