200-Million-Year-Old Toddlers: The Discovery Of Four Exoplanets

During the earlier years of man, when gas-powered automobiles were still thoughts waiting to be conceived, just about everything was an unknown. The animals, the plants, everything the world had to offer, cloaked in mystery – or so we thought. With curiosity fueling their decisions, people eventually learned more and more about whatever there was to learn.

The journey to understanding the world better continues to this day. Thanks to advancements in the field of technology, we can now access the corners we initially thought were inaccessible. This, of course, includes the world beyond the skies, or outer space, as we call it. With more of the universe discovered each passing year, the world just seems to keep getting bigger and bigger.

The Equipment

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that science and technology undoubtedly go well together. Over the years, companies spend portions upon portions of investment money creating the equipment scientists need in their research projects, many of which involve studying the universe.

While some of us may have telescopes that help us see the stars better at night, it goes without saying that companies like NASA have bigger and more advanced versions of these pieces of equipment in their facilities. One such notable piece their researchers have access to would be the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the most vital and versatile tools in the field of astronomy. Plus, space telescopes like Kepler and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have played a significant part in unraveling many of the universe’s mysteries, one of which is exoplanets, planets outside the solar system.

Exoplanets

As previously mentioned, any planet outside the solar system is classified as an exoplanet. With that said, the first batch of exoplanets was discovered back in 1990. With credits to the researchers, there have since been more than a thousand of these planets found. That sounds like a lot, right? Well, in one way or another, that thousand is just a small needle inside a haystack we know as the universe.

With their locations being light-years away from the solar system, it’s no surprise these exoplanets are hard to find, even with the aid of telescopes. Thankfully, researchers have found ways around this hurdle. One such example would be the transit method. In the same way the planets in the solar system orbit the sun, many of these exoplanets also orbit around a star. Knowing that, some researchers now focus their sights on stars. If a dim spot ever appears in front of it, the chances are high that it’s an orbiting planet.

Toddler Planets

Exoplanets are interesting finds. They could be solid like Earth or Mars or gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter. Sometimes, they could even be a bit of something in between. With that said, scientists have recently found four exoplanets to add to their ever-growing collection of data regarding the universe’s millions of celestial bodies.

Like the planets in our solar system, these exoplanets orbit around their very own stars. One of them orbits a star known as TOI 1807, while the other three orbit TOI 2076. Located 130 light-years from the Earth – that’s almost 1.23 quadrillion kilometers away – these celestial bodies are said to be about 200 million years old. That may sound old, but by star standards, that’s pretty young. Our solar system’s sun is already around 5 billion years old, after all. With that said, thanks to this discovery, scientists now have more subjects to observe and use as reference for their studies. While it may still take time for significant breakthroughs to come to light, rest assured these researchers won’t be giving up on their investments anytime soon. Perhaps one day, we might even have the chance to travel to these exoplanets.