3Q: Julien de Wit on the discovery of seven temperate, nearby worlds
Today, an international team including astronomers from MIT and the University of Liège in Belgium has announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a nearby star just 39 light years from Earth. All seven planets appear to be rocky, and any one of them may harbor liquid water, as they are each within an area called the habitable zone, where temperatures are within a range suitable for sustaining liquid water on a planet’s surface. The discovery marks a new record, as the planets make up the largest known number of habitable-zone planets orbiting a single star outside our solar system. The results are published today in the journal Nature. Julien de Wit, a postdoc in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, is heading up the team’s study of the planets’ atmospheres, the compositions of which may offer up essential clues as to whether these planets harbor signs of life....