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Astronomers say finding alien life is possible in the next decade

Scientists looking to newly-discovered 'rocky' planets more similar to Earth than more hostile planets like Jupiter

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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope caught a double transit, which is when two planets pass in front of the same star at almost the same time. Photo: ESO / M. Kornmesser

On May 2, an international team of astronomers announced that they had discovered three Earth-sized exoplanets, all orbiting the same star (TRAPPIST-1) just 40 light-years from us.

The scientists determined that all three planets are potentially habitable based on their size and temperature.

Now, the same team has discovered that the two innermost planets are rocky and have compact atmospheres, making them less like the hostile planet of Jupiter and more like the rocky planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars. This makes the prospect of life lurking in these faraway worlds even stronger. The researchers published their results in Nature.

The findings were made just two days after the team announced that it had found the planetary system.

A promising place to detect alien life

Systems like this are promising places to detect alien life, Michaël Gillon, lead author of the paper presenting the discovery, says.

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