Worlds outside of our solar system today. We have brief recitations from all of our panelists, and then we will answer questions from those in the studio, on the phone, and on social media. Asknasa. Se the hashtage use the asknasa. Thomas, can you start off with would be big news of the day is . Thomas thanks so much. Ive been associative administrator for close to five months, and i have just been in awe today about the deaths and breath of the science we do here. Breadth of thed science we do here. Announce that we have used our space telescope to determine that there are seven offsite planets orbiting a nearby star about 40 lightyears away whats more, as you can see in this illustration, is that three of these planets are in the habitable zone that liquid water can pull on the service. With the light atmospheric conditions, there could be water on any of these planets. We found it many terrestrial planets around a single star, and that is the first time we theseeen able to measure habitable earth type planets. These planets are among the best seell the plants we know to the atmospheres and look at signatures to see if it gives us a hand that finding a second earth is not just a matter of if, but when. Scientists believe that around every star, there could be one that have a shot at becoming a habitable ecosystem that we can explore. What we really have in this story is a major step forward towards answering one of these very questions that are at the heart of so many of our philosophers of what we are thinking about while we are by our self, are we alone out there . We are making a leap forward toward answering that question. I really excited for you to hear about it. Felicia thanks, thomas. Can you tell us more about this finding . Michael we used the spitzer discover, orpe to in the same star, seven earth sized planets. Thatis the first time seven are around the same star have been found. Is the leastlf massive kind of star that exists. These are much smaller and cooler than our sun. Frequent inll very the galaxy, more than our sun type stars. You see the comparison between a basketball and a golf ball. The basketball would be the sun, and the golf ball would be trap 1. One trapus habitable zone is much closer to it v habitable zone is the habitable zone is much closer to it. Zone where liquid water could exist is most likely to exist on the straight face of a rocky planet. It is very promising. Felicia what can you tell us about these distant planets . Michael we have observed very precisely their sizes. ,e have, thanks to spencer preliminary measurements for the masses of six of them. Our measurement is precise enough to suggest a water rich composition, which is very exciting. This is one of the planets in the habitable zone. These planets are orbiting so close to the star that they are probably tidally locked, meaning they always face the star with the same side. So if you look at this animation, you can see a view of tidally locked planets. Planet could be just like this. The planets are close to each other. If you were on the surface of one of these planets, you would have a wonderful view on the other planets. You wouldnt see them what we see venus or mars like dots of light, that as you can see in the next illustration, you would see them really as we see the moon. You can see the structures on these world. They would be as large of the moon, and even larger for some of them. It would be a wonderful view on these planets. Sean, can you give us context to the discovery and why spitzer played such a vital role . Important is the most discovery we have made with spitzer. Intensive doing followup with a lot of groundbased telescopes. In more than 20 days of continuous observation, we confirmed that two of the planets found in the initial discovery and five more planets were in the system. 1 is an ultracool dwarf, much brighter in the infrared that and the visible. Spitzer,it better for which is an infrared telescope. 2003 andas launched in never intended to study exoplanets. We had to do clever more than an astronomical units away from the earth. We did engineering on the ground to allow spitzer to measure brightness is very precisely, 1000 times more precisely than we imagined it would be able to do. What we will show in the next animations how, when spitzer sees the planets, we dont image the individual planets. The planets pass in front of the star, we see the amount of light the star is dimmed by when that plaintiff is blocking it. You see the planets going in front of the star, blocking a little bit of the light. The size of the dip tells you the size of the planet. We can get the size of the planet directly for measuring the dip. When you see them orbiting around at around, and every time they trained that you can measure the space in between the transit, and that tells you about the orbit, how long that year is. What we know how long it takes for the planned to go around the star, we also know the distance it is from the star. That also tells it whether or not it is in the habitable zone. The planets are all very close together, and their orbits are spaced such that they gravitationally interact with each other. They tug and pull as they go flying around their star. But that does is change the orbit. Of the measuring those differences, what we are able to do is measure the masses of the planet. Now that we have the mass and size of the planet, we can make an estimate of what the density is, and that gives us some understanding about what the opposition of the planet is. From that, we can tell whether they are rocky, gaseous, or even watery. Felicia net, what can you tell us about studying the atmospheres of these planets . Nikole the atmosphere of a planet tells a great deal about the formation and evolution of limits, and about all the physical processes occurring on the surface and in the air, especially those that might make the planet habitable or indicative of hosting life. We can use space telescopes today to study the atmospheres of planet using a technique called transmission spectroscopy , which takes fingerprints of different chemicals in the air. We are currently using the Hubble Space Telescope to study the planets in the system to discover if they have Hydrogen Helium dominated atmospheres. It would be great to find out if they dont. It gives us another push forward in having these planets the rocky and the potential of those planets supporting water on their services. Just last year, hubble probed the innermost planets of the system and found they didnt have hydrogenhelium dominated atmosphere, so one more step along the path to having the potential these potentially habitable worlds. To give you a brief view of the zoom out zone, if we away from the star, you see all seven planets. The capital the habitable zone is in the blue region. The innermost planet in the zone is trapus 1e. You see an artist rendition of of trapus 1e. It is very close in size to earth. It also receives about the same amount of light as earth does in our solar system. Means you can have temperatures very simpler very similar to the ones we have on earth. The next one is trappist one asked. This is a potentially trappist 1f. This is a potentially water rich similarso the same size as yours. It has a nine day orbit and receives about the same amount of sunlight as mars. The final plaintiff in the habitable zone is trappist one g. T trappist 1g is the largest in the system. It receives about the same amount of starlight as somewhere in between mars and the astroid belt in our own solar system. While we dont have the technology yet to travel to any of these planets, how long would it take to travel here . If we were able to travel at light speed, we could arrive in 39 years. A jetomething more like plane, it would take far longer, something along the line of 44 million years. Felicia thank you so much, nicole. These discoveries so exciting for the Scientific Community . Sara we have made a giant accelerated leap forward in the search for habitable worlds and life on other worlds, potentially speaking. It is not just one planet, but several. If we didnt have the habitable zone quite right or were it sure of what we were looking for, we have many changes over. Planet see, like in this system, goldilocks has many sisters. We dont know much about the planets. We know the masses and sizes and how much radiation in their orbits. For now we just speculate. Systemt, the trappist 1 has captured our imagination. We have a new travel poster you can download from the nasa website. It has captured, scientifically accurately, how you could see on one planet all of the other planets in the sky. ,istorically, and exoplanet when there is one, there is more. That is why i am so excited to be here today to share with you. With this amazing system, we know that there must be many more potentially life bearing worlds out there just waiting to be found. Felicia thanks. What are astronomers doing to learn more about the system and others like it was mark like it . Sara they have started to put up more telescopes, and they are going to use telescopes to search 1000 of the nearest ultracool dwarf stars. About thisa second trappist system, i forgot to mention that one of the reasons astronomers are so excited about it is it is a veritable laboratory for studying planets orbiting very cool, very small, very dim red stars that are so incredibly different from our son. Astronomers constantly go back and forth about all the excitement about these worlds because they are very easy to study. Other people have fears and concerns. We actually get to test many peoples theories about these worlds being tidally locked, radiation from the host star, and things like that. We are counting on speculators to find more systems around these dwarfs. That, when to someone makes a discovery like this, we put almost any telescope that can followup to follow up. In that way, we heard about but other telescopes are exploring the trappist system further. What the team is most excited about, although this is still in the future, is the james webb space telescope, which will launch later in 2018. With this telescope, and the recently trappist planets are so significant, as they are studying the atmospheres and trying to assess the Greenhouse Gas content, which will help us understand the surface temperatures of the planet. Are they the right planet to support liquid water and life as we know it is mark it . We will even use it to search for gases that might be produced by life such as oxygen, ozone, methane, and other gases. Felicia thanks, sarah. Before we go into q and a, d you have any closing thoughts for us . Thomas for me, research into exoplanets is really in its gold rush phase. Is started 20 years ago, and i couldnt help but notice that the last clause there on your paper is the same at the announcement of the first exoplanet ever discovered in 1995. Since then, we have found thousands of stars, and dozens of them are in the habitable zone. Not until now had that many planets in the habitable zone. It is only expanding. A rapidgoing forward at pace not just because of the telescopes that are there, but because the telescopes that are launching soon. We talked about the james webb ones that but also are being planned right now. We are opening our eyes on to the universe, and in many cases, these exoplanets. The believe that many of best telescopes that will give us the most information are yet to be invented. Theres many things we dont know, many questions we have that come up when we see these observations. Will look at all these animations. Very likely, nature is way more beautiful and amazing than what we have animated here. It is always that way. For us, the question is how do we open up our lens and see these things . How did we get so much data from that that the questions we ask are able to be answered . For me, at the end, it is all about that thought that i have so often when i go to bed at howt and really imagine these otherworldly look like. The fact that there are worlds out there just like the earth that have some colin allergies some commonalities with the earth, it is just happening right now, these questions about are we alone that are being answered as we speak in this decade and the next decades. I am really excited about this. Felicia with that, lets transition to q a. We have a ton of questions on social media. If you would like to ask a questions, please use the hash tag asknasa. This first one comes from twitter user who asks, what is the total amount of possibly habitable planets we have had, including these discoveries . Nikole sara the total number is unknown. We have to wait until we see the atmosphere is to know how hot or cold they are. That is why these are so relevant. Unlike a lot of the other habitable zone planets, we can actually assess them in the near future. Wonderful. , anyext question confirmation of water on the planetary bodies . There has not been any confirmation of water on the planetary bodies. It will take a lot of withvation with hubble or where do in the future to probe the atmospheres as he we can detect water on these planets. But people are looking. Matthew asks, will this be one of the first observation for st quest mark jw . A lot of folks have thought about observing it was jade of ust with jw st. Even now we continue to take observations from the ground with spitzer to look at the timing measurements. We will have much better measurements that we have currently. Felicia we are going to take one question on the phone line from j bennett, and then go back to social media. Hello everyone. I was wondering if the fact that is a particularly cool red dwarf that would support more plaintiff that are eventually more planets that are potentially habitable because there are less solar flares and things . They are very active when they are young, and that is the main concern. Anre could have been atmosphere eroded strongly by the star when it was young. It is a cool dwarf, so it is not very active, but maybe when it was young conditions were quite different. Out thereally figure and whathese planets happened in its active young state. The great news is we can observe in the near future. We know longer have to rely on what we think and speculation, because nature is usually smarter than we are. If there is anyway for like to get a foothold, we like to believe it will. Felicia thank you. We will go back to social media. Any namesu decided for the planets yet . Sara like a popular name . We have 20 of possibilities. Wet think they will have plenty of possibilities. Dont think they will become official. Sara we have no way to easily give these names, but perhaps it is something we should try to change. Josephine asks, do the earth size planets have any moons . Is no, how can there be possible waves on water . We have no indication of a moon. If we look at our theory, it would be quite unlikely to have a move around had a moon around a planet so close to the star. We will see in the future. There is still many news to come about the system. The title forces between the planets are not negligible. If there was water on the planets, there would be tides, as well because of the title forces between the planets. Felicia next we will go to the phone lines. We have keith. A question probably best for sarah. They seem really close together. Im eyeing biologist looking at free potentially habitable worlds really close to each other. Should we thinking that the biosphere around this group of close net planets might extend past just one planet if they are close to each other . Sara that is a wonderful question, and we havent thought that far yet. Im sure there is a student out there listening who will take this problem on. I will answer a slightly different question, because if we want to think about intelligent civilization out there looking back at us, they may be having a press conference saying, there are three have a will place there, venus earth and mars, that appeared to be in the habitable zone. Lets wait and see what out there. But great question, and hopefully somebody will work on this. Felicia next we have martha from the associated press. I was wondering, how many years do you think it might take to have a real good handle on the atmospheres of these exoplanets . We can make is substantial amount of progress in the next five years, starting with hubble and moving to continue the exploration of these atmospheres. We can see results in the early 20 20s. I know this is the first time some of these this many planets have appeared around a star like this. Was the closest runnerup to that . How many earth sized planets around the star did you see prior . Michael i think its two or three, no more. I dont remember. Thank you. Lets go back to social media. This question comes from miles obrien, who asks, what sort of instrument could be used to answer the question of whether these planets harbor life . Could web do it . Nikole web has a slew of instruments that cover wavelength from the infrared further into the spectrum. It has a lot of powerful spectrographs the board. It will allow us to do these transmissions photography iansmissions photography talked about. We can search do a lot of what sara suggested in determining habitability and the potential of harboring life. Sara on to add one thing. We really try to emphasize, we have the capability to find signs of life elsewhere, but nature has to deliver. This is also new to us, these red dwarf stars. We dont know what is out there. If nature has made life ubiquitous and there are lot of atmospheres with potential accumulation of gases, we will have no trouble finding it at all. If it is the opposite, it may be a while. I want to add one more point that we had covered. We have a test mission of coming so we hopeearches, to have many more of these and lots of chances to find signs of life in the future. Question, is it possible to listen to the planet system using our steady style telescopes . How do we learn as much as possible . To my knowledge, they have no signal detected. It is doable, but there is no signal detected. , how far in the for siebel future until we might see a craft that can make the journey trappist 1 . It requires so many miracles on the way. When james webb was developed, the way i think about it, it required Something Like 10 miracles, things we had never done to put it together into a telescope with a 6. 5 meter foldable mirror and thermal systems like a tennis court in size. You start inventing your way forward. This question that is being asked, it may be a 100 miracle type of question. Some of them probably relate to nuclear propulsion, radiation protection, things that we are just starting to push at. The good news is, there is a lot of work being done on the first five to 10 of those that are being looked at, not necessarily because we have our eyes set right now im going to the star, but because we are looking we went to get there with more energy very the way this game works, it is leaning forward. Just because it takes 100 miracles, not acting up. That is what led to this kind of discovery. There have been a whole bunch of miracles and detectors. The same is true for the other question. I would like to briefly mention our colleagues and you can go look that up and see that they are planning 19 miracles to figure out a way to spend very flying by thet nearest stars. I just want to remind all of you, although it may sound discouraging that we wont have a way