Please use ask nasa. Todays participants are thomas associate administrator at nasa headquarters in washington. Mchale astronomer at the belgium. Shaun kerry manager of nasa Spitzer Science Center in pasadena california. Sarah seager professor of Planetary Science in Massachusetts Technology in cambridge and carl lewis and with that, thomas can you start us off with what the big news of the day is . Thanks so much. Look ive been associate administrator for close to five months and ive just been in awe and am today. Were changing peoples lives every day and we launch into space and we know we stretch our information and inspire every day. And todays story is just that. Im excited to announce this team has used our space telescope to discover theres 7 earth size planets near the one star 40 light years away. Once more as you can see in this illustrations its that three of these planets marked in green are in habitable surface where i will questioned water can pull on the surface. That could be water on any of these planets so for the first time we found as many planets around a single star and thats the first time theyve been able to measure in addition to that the masses and the radius of these type earth size planets. These planets are among the best of all the planets to follow up and to see for example what the james Webb Telescope the atmospheres and to look if there are any to discover a hint that finding a second earth is not just a matter of if, but when. Scientists believe actually that around every star there could be one planet take three, take five, take seven and you can just imagine how many worlds have an habitable ecosystem we can explore and what we have in this story is a major step forward towards answering one of the very questions at the heart of so many of our philosophers of what were thinking about when were by ourselves and thats basically are we alone out there . Were making a step forward, a leap forward in fact towards answering that question and im really excited for you to hear about it now. Thanks thomas. So michael can you tell us more about this finding . Sure. As thomas mentioned we used the spitzer space telescope to discover around the same time that one, not two but seven earth size planets and this is the first time that several are formed around the same star. So the zone and the star itself is what is called a massive kind of this star are much smaller and cooler than our sun and still they are frequent in galaxy. And if we look at this illustrations you see between the basketball and the gold wall. But the basketball would be the sun and the gold bowl would be traps one. Its much cooler and much smaller than our sun so the planet in its in habitable zone are much closer to it with short orbital prelude and in these graphics what you can see of the planet which we found around it is three of them in the habitable zone. Goldie lock wheres liquid water could exist and most likely to exist. Free of the earth sided planet and the fifth habitable zone is promising for search of life beyond the solar system. What can you tell us about the distant planet . We have very precisely they size it and we have thanks to spitzer two the planets of six of them and for one its precise enough to strongly suggest water rich composition thats very exciting because this one of these in the habitable zone. The planet orbiting the star or theyre probably tied which mean they always face the star with the same side like the moon to the earth. And so if you look at with animation you can see a view of the planet with the paramount on this side and on this. The traps one can be just like this. Now whats so exciting about the system and the Plan Resident so close. If you were on the surface of one of these planets you would have wonderful view of the other planet. We dont see them like we see venus or mars but as you can see in the next illustrations you would see them really as we see the moon. You would see walls which are very big and the structures on these walls would be as large as the moon and even larger for some of them. So it would be a wonderful view on this planet. Thanks. So shaun, can you give us an idea or more context to discovery and why spitzer played a vital role . First id like to say my opinion this is the most exciting discovery so far in the almost 14 years of operation. As you can see in the graphic the initial discover was by the traps telescope in chili and more than 20 days of continuing observation with spitzer. We confirmed two planet ins the initial discovery and five more for total of 7 planet ins the system thats pretty exciting. Now traps one is ultra cool dwarf much brighter in the infrared than the visible making it idea to use an infratelescope. And then as you can see in the animation of spitzer so spitzer was launched in 2003 and never intended to study xo planets so we had to do clever for astro from call unit so you cant fly out and do anything about it but clever engineering on the ground to allow spitzer to measure star brightnesses a thousand times more precisely than we imagine able to do and what well show in the next animation is spitzer sees the planets similar to where the space telescope does the planets pass in front of the star and we see the amount of white the star is dimmed by when the plan set locking it so the dips here are planets in front of the star blocking a little bit of the light. The size of the dip tells you the size of the plan society we can get it directly from measuring depth. When you see the different planets that orbiting around and around and every time they transit you can measure the space and that tells you the period of the orbit. How long that year is and for then we know how long it takes for planet to go around the star we know the distance it is from the star and that tells us whether or not its in habit zone. The traps one system are in interesting configuration. Theyre orbits are spaced such that they gravitationly interact and tug and pull as they go flying around their star and what that does is it changes the timing of the transit as the planets tug each other so they dont happen as regularly without the tug and measuring differences what were able to do is measure the masses of the planets so now we have that and the size so we can make an estimate of what the density is and thats important. From that we can tell where the planets are. Or even watery. Thanks shaun. So nicole. What can you tell us about studying the atmospheres of the planets . So atmosphere tells us a great deal of the formation of the evolution of the planets and the physical processes on the surface and the air. Especially those that might make the planet in habitable. We have space telescopes today to study the atmosphere using technician that detects fingerprints in a planets air such as water or methane or ozone or oxygen. Were using hubell space to study a planet ins the system to determine if they have Hydrogen Helium dominated. Its great to find out if they dont. That give us us another push forward and having planets be in fact rocky and those to support water on the surfaces. Just last year hubell probeed the inter most trans b and c and found they didnt have hydrogen and helium dominated atmospheres. Its one more step along the path. What do we know about the worlds in the habitable zone. Ill use the habit zone of the traps one system. Way from the host star you can see all and the habitable zone is the blue regional on top. Innermost region is traps 1e. So in this illustrations, youll see in our rendition an interesting planet. Its close in size to earth as you can see here. It also receives about the same amount of light as earth does in our own solar system. This means that in perhaps 1e you can have temperatures similar to the ones here on earth. The next planet out is traps one f. Now this is a potentially water rich world that is again about the same size as earth. Now traps 1 f is about a nine day orbit and during that time received the same amount of sunlight as mars does in our own solar system and the final planet is traps 1g. Now traps 1g is the largest in the trans 1 system. Its about 13 larger radius than that of earth. You can see in this comparison here. And it receives about the same amount of starlight as between mars and the astroid belt in our own solar system. Why we dont have technology to travel how long would it take to travel here . Well, thankfully we can ask the xo planets and we can arrive in 39 years at light speed. Something more like a jet plain would take something along the line of 44,000,000 years. Well then. Thank you so much nicole. Sarah . Why are these discoveries so exciting . With this weve made a giant accelerated leap in terms of life on other worlds because not just with one but several we have room that if we didnt have the habitable zone right or werent sure what to look for we have many chances over. You can say globally its like in this planetary system goldilocks has many sisters. We dont know much about the planets. We knows a we heard earlier the masses and sizes and how much radiation is falling on them and their orbits so now we speculate. For that its captured our imagination and we have a new travel poster from nasa website and its captured scientifically accurately, how on one of the planets you can see all the other planet ins the sky. Now historically xo planets when theres one theres more and thats why im so excited to be here to share it with you. Exo planets when theres one theres more and thats why im so excited to be here to share it with you. There must be many out there waiting to be found. Thanks so what are astronomers doing to learn more about the system and others like it . Well first of all, michael and his team have started put up more telescopes and theyre going to hear from the ground use them to search one thousand of the nearest ultra cool dwarf stars and actually i back up a second about this system because i forgot to mention one of the reasons that hes excited is its in veritable lab bra or the for planets orbiting cool and small dim red stars that are incredibly different from our sun. Astronomers go back and forth about all the excitements about these because theyre very easy to study and other people have fears and concerns so we actually get to test many peoples theories about these worlds being locked and the radiation from the host star and like that. Hopefully were counting on them to find more planets around the ultra common stars we can study in addition to speck lo s we put almost any telescope that can follow up to. In that way we have, we heard about hubell already from nicole but spitzer and other telescopes are exploring the system further. I say what the team is most excited about though this is in the future is james Webb Telescope that will launch later in 2018 and the reason this so significant is that they are accessible to observations with the james webb space telescope. You can see the animation here. With that we can study the atmospheres and try to assess the Greenhouse Gas content helping us understand the surface of the planet are. They indeed the right temperature for liquid water and life as we know it. Were going to search for gases. Gases that dont belong that might be produced by life such as oxygen methane and a whole host of other gases. Thank you. So before we go to q a thomas you have closing thoughts for us . For me to research exo planets is really in its gold rush phase. It started Something Like 20 years ago and i couldnt help but notice the last was the same that was there at the announcement of the first ever discovered and announced in 1995 and since then weve found thousands of those a little under 5,000. Dozens of them are in habitable zone. None have had that many in the habitable zone and its only expanding. This Going Forward at a rapid pace not just because the telescopes that are there now but launching soon and you talked about the james Webb Telescope but also tests that will be there and the plans right now really opening our lens and our viewpoints on to the universe and especially in many cases these exo planets. I do believe that many of the best telescopes that will give us most information are yet to be invented. Theres many things we dont know. Mr. Questions we have that we have come up when we see the observations we look at all the animations and very likely nature is way more beautiful and amazing than what weve animated here. Its always that way so for us question is, how do we actually open up our lens and see these things . How do we get so much data from that that kind of questions are actually able to be answered . And for me at the end its all about that thought i have so many times when i go to bed imagining thaw other worlds really look like. The fact that there are worlds out there just like the earth, that have some commonalitys with the earth and you could imagine these worlds. Its only happening right now. These questions about are we alone. Are being answered as we speak in this decade and the next. Im really excited about this. Thanks thomas. With that, lets transition to q a. We have a ton of questions on social media so there first if you would like to ask a question. Please use the ask nasa. Wonderful we have lots of questions coming in. This first from twitter user that asks what is the total amount of habitable planets including the discoveries here . Okay the total number of habitable planets believe it or not is unknown. It depends who you ask and how you count them. We would say theres a few dozen exo planet but the bottom lineism of them may be a bit too hot or too big. You have to wait until we can see the atmospheres to know how hot or cold the planets are and thats why theyre so relevant because unlike a lot of others we can actually assess them in the near future. Wonderful. Already the next question here comes from scott who asks any confirmation of the water on the planetary bodies . Yeah i can handle that one. Theres not been any confirmation of the water on these planetary bodies. It will take a lot of observations with hubell or in the future with webb to see if we can detect water. Its fair to say people are certainly looking. Yes. They are. Great this question comes from matthew who asks will this be one of the first observations and how much can we learn about c f andg until that Mission Launch . I can take that one too. You know a lot of folks learning about the system have thought about observing it with data and im fairly certained that cycle one will see some over all the planet ins the system. Even now were continuing to take observations from the ground and spitzer to look at the transit timing variations so better measurements of the massings as time goes on and next year much better than we have currently. Okay were going to take one question on the phone line from jay bennett from Popular Mechanics and then back to social media. Jay . I was wondering the fact that travis wanted a particularly red dwarf means its more likely to support planets habitable because it doesnt have as much solar activity or flairs or these types of things . I can take this one. So they are known to be very active when they were young and this the main concern about the habitable planet. They could have been the atmosphere been eroded by the star when it was young. Now its quiet. So its not very active, but maybe when it was young the conditions were quite different so it will be by observation that well figure out the path of these planets and what happened during this very active and young phase. Well just add to that and rephrase to say the great news is we can observe in the near future and no longer have to rely on what we think. Nature is usually smarter than we are and if theres anyway for life to get a foothold we believe it will. Thank you. Were going to go back to social media. Jason . This question comes from twitter user saying have you decided names for the planets yet . Yet . A name . Give them a name. Like a popular name . Well have plenty of possibilities that are all related to belgium beer but we dont think theyll be official for now. Lets call them b,c, d. We have no way to give official names like astroids but perhaps its something we should try to change. This next question comes from a twitter user. Earth size have any moons revolving around them and if no, how can there be possible waves on water . Well in our data we have no indication of a moon. First of all, if we look at this it would be quite unlikely to have a moon so close to the star so maybe the other planets still to be found could have a moon. Well see in the future. Theres many views of the system. The title forces between the planets are not negligible so if there was water on the planets there would be tides as well because the forces between them instead of planet and moon. Yeah. Go to the phone lines and we have keith from nasa watch. Keith . Theres a question probably best for sarah. Im looking at the planets assuming they are really close together. The systems where stuff is thrown from one to another and this question is about why should you consider these ecosystem . Im a biologist looking at three habitable worlds close to each other. Should we be thinking conceivably the biosphere might extend beyond them if theyre this close to each other . Thats a wonderful question and we havent thought that far yet but im sure theres a student out there that should take this problem on . Ill back up one step though and answer slightly different question because if we want to think about intelligence and civilization they may have a press conference and say theres three in habitable planets there. It may appear no matter how we describe. Lets wait and see whats out there. Hopefully somebody will work on this. Next on the phone in loos we have marsha dunn from the associated press. Yes, hello. How many years do you think it might take to have a real good handle on the atmospheres of the exo planets and i have a followup question. So we could make a substantial amount of progress the next sort of five years. The continuing of the exploration of the atmospheres we can see results in early 2020s. Thank you and know these are, this is the first time planet size planets have appeared around a star like this. What is the closest runner up to that. How many size planets around a star that youve seen prior . I think its two or three. No more. Do you remember that . I dont remember so many of those . Thank you. So, lets go back to social media. Jason . Alright. This question comes from miles here on twitter, what sort of instrument could be used to answer the question where these planets harbor life . Could webb do it . So webb has instruments that cover wave length from sort of this all the way to further back to the spectrum and in particular has powerful things aboard and this will allow us to do the transmission i talked about and we can start to detect molecules like water and methane and ozone and oxygen and we can start to do what sarah suggested with habitable and life. A