They are only 40 light years from Earth and could be habitable. The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, comes from the hand of an international team of researchers who have used the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) located in La Silla of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
The three possible potentially habitable worlds hidden in the constellation Aquarius are orbiting an extremely cold dwarf star, something that has never been observed in astronomy. It is true that cold dwarf stars are very common in our galaxy, but what is unusual is that they have planets around them; These also have temperatures very similar to those of Venus and Earth, which makes them ideal candidates to host life outside our solar system.
“It really is a paradigm shift as to which way to go in our search for planets and life in the universe. Until now, the existence of these ‘red worlds’ orbiting ultra-cool dwarf stars was purely theoretical, but now we have, not a lone planet around a faint red star, but a complete system of three planets! ”, Explains Emmanuël Jehin, co-author of the work.
Thanks to other higher-powered telescopes, astronomers have confirmed that the planets orbiting this red dwarf, renamed TRAPPIST-1, are very similar in size to Earth. Two of them have orbital periods of about 1.5 and 2.4 days and the third an estimated orbit of between 4.5 and 73 days.
“With the help of several giant telescopes currently under construction, including ESO’s E-ELT and the James Webb Space Telescope (which NASA, ESA and the Canadian agency CSA will launch in 2018), we will soon be able to study the composition of the atmosphere of these planets and explore them, first for water and then for traces of biological activity. It is a giant step in the search for life in the universe ”, comments Julien de Wit, co-author of the study.
