New Planets Reflection

Entering this technologically and scientifically-advanced era has gradually been extremely beneficial for scientists as well as the population. With our new technology, we have gradually discovered more and more celestial bodies that may or may not be able to support life. Since 2005, we have found more and more ‘super-Earths’, which is a term used for an extrasolar planet that has a mass higher than planet Earth’s but below the mass of the solar systems’ gas giants. In some cases, these super-Earths contain water as well as potential living support. In 2011, fifty new planets were found. Sixteen of them are super-Earths. As the article states, these planets were found by a High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher – HARPS for short. This instrument has found two-thirds of known exoplanets that have masses less than that of Neptune. One of the wonders that HARPS has discovered is the HD 85512b super-Earth, which lies in its star’s habitable zone. These new discoveries stated in this article are important to everyone out there. This article interests me because I have always had a fascination towards the mystery of space. The fact that there may be alternate solutions should interest not only me, but the whole world. If one out of sixteen super-Earths discovered in one year are in its star’s habitable zone, than we can just estimate how many super-Earth will be discovered in ten or twenty years. And among those, how many can support life. Seeing that our technology is so advanced makes me anticipate the future discoveries. The possibilities are endless. In addition, the fact that one day, soon enough, we’ll be able to find a way to travel to these super-Earth intrigue me even more, although I might not be existing for these advancements. I consider myself lucky to be living in a generation where I can witness technology advancing this quickly. Since a subject like this is intriguing in my eyes, it makes me, as well as anybody else, wonder many things