The hunt is on for Earthlike planets outside our solar system that may harbor life.

Astronomer Geoff
Marcy explains the challenges of finding infinitesimally small planets orbiting huge, very bright stars.
By monitoring the light from distant stars, sensitive instruments can detect the very slight dimming
that occurs when objects, such as orbiting planets, pass in front of them.
NARRATOR: Geoff Marcy is one astronomer trying to directly answer that question. He's a
planet hunter, scanning the heavens for signs of planets that may have already formed around
other stars, thousands of light years away from our solar system.
GEOFF MARCY: It is actually quite a challenge to find planets around other stars. And the
reason is very simple: planets don't shine, planets are essentially dark.
NARRATOR: By using advanced telescopes, dedicated planet hunters, like Geoff, have found
ways to overcome this challenge.
GEOFF MARCY: If you watch a star, it ought to have the same brightness all the timetwenty-
four/sevenbut if there's a planet orbiting that star, when the planet crosses in front of the star,
the planet will block a little of the starlight, and you'll see the star dim, a tiny amount, every time
the planet crosses in front, over and over, in a repeated way. And, marvelously, you can learn
the size of the planet, because the bigger the planet is, the more light from the star it blocks.
And so we learn an enormous amount of information about these planets just by watching stars
dim.
NARRATOR: Not surprisingly, most of the planets astronomers have found this way, are giant
ones that block a lot of starlight.
By also observing the gravitational pull they have on their stars, Geoff calculates that most of
these giant planets are made of gas and are unlikely to be habitable. But the Holy Grail is to find
far smaller rocky worlds, like Earth, where the conditions for life could exist.
GEOFF MARCY: The challenge of finding Earth-sized planets is enormous; when an Earth
crosses in front of a star, it blocks only one-one-hundredth of one percent of the light from the
star.
NARRATOR: The Kepler space telescope is designed to detect this subtle dimming. Its
mission: to focus on one tiny spot of space and scrutinize 150,000 stars for signs of planets the
size of Earth.
Sensitive enough to detect minute dips in a star's light, Kepler is already producing mountains of
data, and thousands of new planet candidates are being discovered.
GEOFF MARCY: Kepler has now already discovered a few planets that have a diameter and a
mass that indicates clearly that the planet is rocky. And so we now have, for the first time in
human history, definite planets, out there among the stars, that remind us of home.
NARRATOR: These first rocky planets are too close to their stars to sustain life, but the sheer
number of smaller planets being found is transforming our view of solar systems beyond our
own.
GEOFF MARCY: We've learned that nature makes some large planets, the size of Jupiter and
Saturn; that nature makes even more of the smaller planets the size of Neptune, and even more
of the planets the size of the earth. The number of planets is sort of like the rocks and pebbles
you see on a beach. There are a few big boulders, there are many more rocks and there are an
uncountable number of grains of sand that represent the Earth-sized planets we see in the
cosmos.
NARRATOR: Geoff believes it's only a matter of time before we find a habitable planet.
GEOFF MARCY: I suspect that this scene we see here is one that reproduced, billions of times
over, among the Earth-like planets, the habitable planets in our Milky Way galaxy.
Planet-Hunting
In this video segment adapted from NOVA, learn about the hunt for Earthlike planets
outside our solar system that may harbor life. Astronomer Geoff Marcy explains the
challenges of finding infinitesimally small planets orbiting huge, very bright stars. By
monitoring the light from distant stars, sensitive instruments can detect the very slight
dimming that occurs when objects, such as orbiting planets, pass in front of them. The
video also introduces us to NASAs Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009 to
discover Earth-sized planets and determine how many of the billions of stars in our
galaxy have such planets. The video features real satellite imagery as well as
simulations.
In the race to find another Earth, scientists have just hit a major milestone.
In a NASA teleconference yesterday, a team of astronomers announced that
theyve discovered a planet in a far-away solar system thats the most Earth-like
yetalmost certainly rocky, and at the right temperature for oceans of liquid
water to coat its surface. Its name is Kepler186f and its discovery, reported in
the journal Science, is the first confirmed example of a planet that is made of
solid rock, like Earth, and exists in the habitable zone of another star.

An artist's conception of Kepler-186f. Its host star and four other known planets in the system are
visible in the lower left.
Just how closely its surface conditions resemble Earthand whether it can
sustain liferemains a mystery. Perhaps instead of an Earth twin, weve
discovered an Earth cousin, quipped Thomas Barclay, one of the team members
at NASAs Ames Research Center in a prepared statement.
Nevertheless, this is a watershed moment. This is one of the big milestones
weve been looking for in our attempts to find out if there are places just like
home, if theres life out there, Barclay said.
Lets start with what it has going for it. If you were to make the 500-light-year
trek to Kepler186f and stand on its surface, many things would feel familiar.
There would be solid ground beneath you, and youd probably weigh roughly the
same as you do now. Look around you, and the distance to the horizon would
look very Earthly, as the planet is nearly the same size as Earth (only 10% larger).
But gaze up at its sun and the view would be quite different. Its star is only about
half as big as ours and thousands of degrees cooler, the type of star astronomers
classify as an M dwarfthe smallest and most common type of star in the galaxy.
These stars emit a cool red glow, but we cant tell you what the color of the
planets sky would be; we dont know for sure if it even has an atmosphere.
Kepler186f and four other planets in the same solar system were first detected
by NASAs Kepler space telescope, which from 2009 to 2013 searched for
exoplanets by monitoring the brightness of over 100,000 stars in our galaxy. A
slight and temporary dim indicated that an orbiting planet had crossed in front of
the star, blocking some of its light. The team, led by Elise Quintana of NASA
Ames and the SETI Institute, confirmed the discovery by following up with the
powerful Keck and Gemini telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii using another
methodlooking for the telltale wobble of the star as its orbiting planets give it
a slight gravitational tug to and fro. As the star moves back and forth, the
wavelength of its light shifts like the pitch of a siren as it rushes past youa
phenomenon called the Doppler effect.
Since its mission began in 2009, Kepler has found 962 confirmed planets, and
over 2600 suspected candidates are waiting for further analysis or follow-up
observations. The easiest planets to detect are gas giants, the size of Jupiter or
larger, inhabiting scorching hot orbits very close to their stars. But as Kepler
accumulated more data and scientists became increasingly clever at analyzing it,
theyve been able to pick out smaller and more Earth-like planets in the habitable
zone.
Kepler186f is the smallest confirmed one yet, beating out the previous
titleholder, Kepler62e, a planet roughly 1.6 times the size as Earth. Astronomers
also have a better handle on Kepler186fs mass than another oft-floated
habitable candidate, Gliese 667 Cc, only 22 light years away in the constellation
Scorpius, which astronomers arent sure is rocky or gaseous.

This diagram shows our solar system and Kepler-186 to scale.
But just because Kepler186f is Earth-sized and in the habitable zone doesnt
mean its actually habitable. Scientists arent sure about the prospects for life
around any M dwarf systems. These stars are diminutive, but have very strong
magnetic fields that twist and writhe, causing violent flares that could sterilize a
planet with dangerous ultraviolet radiation or scrub away any atmosphere it
might have had.
Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, wrote on the prospects for
detecting life on Kepler186f for Space.com:
OK, so as a lottery ticket that might deliver on the big payoff a life-bearing world how
good is Kepler-186f? Can we swing some other telescopes in its direction and actually verify
that it has an atmosphere, maybe loaded up with water vapor?
Quintana is doubtful. This star is too dim for follow-up surveys, even with large next-
generation telescopes. But it does show you can form Earth-size planets in the habitable
zone.
And meanwhile, the SETI Institute is continuing its radio reconnaissance of Kepler-186f,
examining a wide swath of microwave frequencies looking for alien transmissions. So far,
the inhabitants if there are any are mum.
Kepler hasnt been collecting data since the spring of 2013, when a mechanical
failure robbed it of its ability to precisely maintain its orientation in space. But
the discovery of Kepler186f shows that theres still much to be uncovered in its
backlog of data. The goal of Kepler wasnt just to find a habitable planet like
Kepler186f, but to find enough of them so scientists can figure out how common
they areand preferably around Sun-like stars, not M dwarfs like Kepler186.
Keplers premature end will make that determination a little less precise than
theyd hoped, but finding a planet like Kepler186f bodes well for the hunt for
more like itand possibly alien life, too.

NASA's Kepler mission has found a rocky world orbiting a red dwarf star. This distant planet is
tidally-lockedone side is always facing the sun, while the other is perpetually shadowed in
darkness. Despite these conditions, it is still possible that life could exist there. Here, scientists
imagine what the plants and animals on such a planet would look like.
What would life on a red dwarf planet look like?