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More livable than Earth? New index sizes up the habitability of alien exoplanets
NASA’s James Webb Telescope, shown in this artist’s conception, will provide more information about previously detected exoplanets. A new habitability index is aimed at helping the Webb team prioritize its search. Credit: NASA
Researchers at the University of Washington’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory have devised a new habitability index for judging how suitable alien planets might be for life, and the top prospects on their list are an Earthlike world called Kepler-442b and a yet-to-be confirmed planet known as KOI 3456.02.
Those worlds both score higher than our own planet on the index: 0.955 for KOI 3456.02 and 0.836 for Kepler-442b, compared with 0.829 for Earth and 0.422 for Mars. The point of the exercise is to help scientists prioritize future targets for close-ups from NASA’s yet-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope and other instruments.
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Read the rest of More livable than Earth? New index sizes up the habitability of alien exoplanets (252 words)
© alboyle for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Habitability, Planetary Habitability Index, Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL)
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/122723/more-livable-than-earth-new-index-sizes-up-the-habitability-of-alien-exoplanets/
