NASA Video: Getting to Know the Goldilocks Planet

Posted on March 30, 2012

NASA says its Kepler spacecraft is discovering a veritable avalanche of alien worlds. NASA says it won't be long before Kepler finds what astronomers find what they are really looking for - an Earth-like planet orbiting its star in the Goldilocks zone. Astronomers forecast that there are tens of billions of planets in habitable zones in the Milky Way. So far, an Earth-like planet located in the Goldilocks zone has not been identified, but this is bound to change. Most planets found so are much bigger than the Earth. NASA describes Earth as the "Goldilocks planet" where "everything is just right for life to exist. It's warm, but not too warm. And it has water, but not too much water."

The Goldilocks concept comes from the fairy tale, "The Story of the Three Bears," where a little girl, named Goldilocks, enters the home of bears and keeps tasting the bears' porridge until she finds one that is "just right."

Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a researcher at NASA headquarters specializing in exoplanet biology, says, "I believe Kepler will find a Goldilocks planet within the next two years. We'll be able to point at a specific star in the night sky and say 'There it is - a planet that could support life!'"

There is probably life on planets outside the Goldilocks zone somewhere in the Universe, but astronomers are first interested in finding an Earth-like planet in a habitable zone in a solar system similar to ours. NASA says next-generation telescopes will make it possible to find these planets and even tell us information about the atmosphere on Goldilocks planets.

Kepler Program Scientist Doug Hudgins, says, "With better detectors and instruments designed to block the glare of the parent stars, these next-generation telescopes could not only find a Goldilocks planet, but also tell us what its atmosphere is made of, what sort of cloud cover graces its skies, and maybe even what the surface is like - whether oceans cover part of the globe, how much land there is, and so on."

Take a look:

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