Goldilocks And The Three Planets By Neil De Grasse Tyson

“Goldilocks and the Three Planets” “Goldilocks and the Three Planets” is an article written by Neil de Grasse Tyson that sums up the creation of the planets and why life is on Earth. He sets it to the story of Goldilocks, where Earth is the Little Bear’s stuff. He then breaks down the different reasons as to why we continue to have life. All of that is the basics to understanding Exoplanets. Exoplanets are just planets that orbit a star that is not our Sun. There is a subsection of exoplanets called “Goldilocks Planets”, coined by Neil de Grasse Tyson. A “Goldilocks Planet” is an exoplanet that is within its host stars habitable zone. The habitable zone is a band around the star where it is “just right”, water is in a liquid form, which makes
life possible. There has been a lot of interest in “Goldilocks Planets” because there is always interest in new planets, and we can now discover and learn about them.
Humans have been looking for habitable planets since they could imagine it. That planet could have intelligent life or it could be our haven in the end of days. People have an insatiable thirst for knowledge of extraterrestrial life. Astrophysicist Rene Heller has stated in Scientific American that “our planet is only marginally habitable.” There are large areas of the Earth where life cannot survive, the tundra, the desert, even parts of the ocean are uninhabitable. Heller has set guidelines on what a “Super-Earth” should be. Larger than our current planet, with a thicker atmosphere and flatter landforms. He states that world would be archipelago like, with shallow seas and chains of islands as a replacement for continents to encourage diverse biology. (Heller) Another interest for looking into “Goldilocks Planets” is to replace or supplement the Earth. Our population could succeed the “carrying capacity” of the planet, or a natural disaster could put the Earth in major danger. There are several ways to find exoplanets, the foremost method is being done is through the NASA Spacecraft Kepler.
Kepler is a part of NASA’s Discovery Program, low-cost, American focused space missions. (Kepler Spacecraft) The Kepler spacecraft worked in conjunction with the Keck Observatory, located at the top of a dormant volcano in Hawaii. (Howell) Kepler can still find exoplanets, just in a smaller field of view. Kepler uses a method called the transient method, Kepler watches a star until there is a dip in the brightness, this is a tell-tell sign that a planet just passed in front of the star. This method produces a lot of false positives, so the facts must be checked by another method. (Kepler Spacecraft)This is where the Keck Observatory plays a big part. The Keck Observatory uses infrared to photograph the coordinates that the Kepler Spacecraft sent to it. (Howell) The Kepler mission was going to last seven years, from 2009 to 2016, but in 2013 three of the four reaction wheels failed. NASA has a plan to reuse the spacecraft in its new K2 Program, which will use Kepler’s camera and also uses the energy from the Sun to push the spacecraft around its own orbit. (Wall) NASA has a new spacecraft in the midst for the future, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. TESS will use an array of cameras to find exoplanets closer to home.
(Kim) Even though the Kepler Spacecraft only had a few years to truly look for exoplanets, there are still 1000 confirmed planets to date.
Kepler-186f is the first most Earth-like planet to be found in the habitable zone, it orbits the Red Dwarf Kepler-186. One of the biggest discoveries for “Goldilocks Planets” is the discovery of the Solar System Kepler-62. Kepler-62 is a five planet system 1200 light years from Earth. Solar System Kepler-62 has two planets that are within its habitable zone, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f. Both planets could have water, but Kepler-62f would be frozen unless there are greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere to heat it up. Kepler-62e would fit Heller’s model for a Super-Earth. (Alien Planet Earth) There have been recent discoveries of Earth-like exoplanets, Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b. The size and location of these planets means that these planets have a high chance of being rocky, like the Earth. While Kepler-438b is closer in size to the Earth, Kepler-442b is a better choice due to its location, Kepler-442b gets around seventy percent of the solar energy that the Earth gets. “We are now closer than we’ve ever been to finding a twin for the Earth,” says NASA scientist Fergal Mullally. (qtd. in
Feltman) With the renewed interest in outer space and the inherent curiosity of the unknown, “Goldilocks Planets” is the new obsession with NASA. The possibility of these planets having liquid water, making it a haven for life to begin increases the need to find these planets. In the future, it may be possible to travel to another planet for vacation. “Relax on Kepler-16b: The Land of Two Suns; Where Your Shadow Always Has Company.” (Rodriguez)