What would the German astronomer and mathematician have thought Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) if he had been told that in four hundred years his name would be associated with the discovery of planets outside the solar system and the search for a new land? Perhaps he would not have been surprised, since he also dedicated himself to astrology and the elaboration of almanacs; or he would have meditated on the mysterious designs of the divinity, because he was also about to become a Lutheran minister.

Although its importance is linked to its link to the scientific revolution of its time, which was linked to discover and state the laws on the movement of planets in their orbit around the Sun.
Planets in habitable zones
On March 6, 2009, NASA launched from Cape Canaveral a satellite with the name of this German astronomer, with the aim of placing itself in orbit around the sun and looking for exoplanets , that is, planets outside our solar system, trying to locate specifically those with a size and a position similar to that of the Earth.

Until now, through other observatories and satellites, planets larger than Earth, similar to Jupiter or Saturn, could be detected, but Thanks to the Kepler team, the search has been expanded, culminating in July 2015 with the discovery of what has been called officially extra "Earth 2.0" (officially Kepler-452b, similar to the name of satellite).
In its nearly three thousand days of space travel, Kepler has detected more than a thousand planets and led astronomers to estimate that there must be at least 17 million planets in the galaxy , many of them organized as our solar system and with a good chance that some of them are in the "habitability zone" , which would be located at a distance from the star that allows the presence of water in a liquid state.
Kepler stuff
Veam Some information about Kepler-452b: its star is 1,400 light years from Earth and is similar in size to our sun, and although the planet is twice as large as Earth is in the "habitability zone".
It takes 385 days to turn around its sun, it is almost certain that it is rocky-and not a gas giant like our brothers Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune-and is a little older, with 6,000 million years old .

Sure Johannes Kepler would have felt deeply proud of this discovery that allows us to delve a little deeper into the knowledge of the universe around us.And as always we have to See each edge of the stories, read also Are we alone in the universe? The answer is scary...
Images: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory , 好 能 開心 , Vanderelbe.de, H.Raab
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