Seven Milky Way worlds could harbour life, say astronomers

Seven planets in the Milky Way outside our solar system could potentially harbour life, researchers from an ambitious project to catalogue all habitable worlds have announced.
The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog (HEC) celebrated its first anniversary with the announcement that it had exceeded expectations in its search for possible new Earths.
Lead researcher Abel Mendez, director of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo's Planetary Habitability Laboratory, said the team had hoped to add perhaps one or two planets in the project's first year.

'Xmas Planets': A collage of computer generated images of possibly habitable worlds made to celebrate the first year of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory's Habitable Exoplanets Catalog. Earth is at the top right

The addition of five possibly habitable planets over the two already known totally exceeded anyone's expectations, he said.
'There are many press releases announcing discoveries of habitable planets ... and that is confusing,' Professor Mendez told SPACE.com. 'So having a catalog that everyone can check what is available right now is useful.'

 

With scientists improving their techniques for finding planets outside the solar system, the pace of discovery is increasing, he added. The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument in Chile and the orbiting Kepler Space Telescope are just two of the tools helping researchers find new exoplanets every month.

Professor Mendez's team at the Planetary Habitability Laboratory launched the HEC in December last year.  It was conceived out of the need to measure the suitability for life of these emerging worlds and as a way to organise them for the general public.
There are nearly 80 confirmed exoplanets with a similar size to Earth but only a few of those have the right distance from their star to support liquid water on the surface, the researchers say.