Researchers May Have Just Discovered A Planet That Harbors Extraterrestrial Life

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently discovered an alien planet, which was given the name K2-3d mission as a part of its K2 mission done by the Kepler's telescope. Now, there are speculations that the newly discovered planet may harbor alien or extraterrestrial life.

According to The Daily Galaxy, a team of scientists from the University of Tokyo, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the Astrobiology Center are now reviewing the transit of the alien planet. The transit is being observed with the help of the MuSCAT instrument placed on board Okayama Astrophysical Observatory's 188-cm telescope.

A transit is a phenomenon where a planet passes in front of its parent star, blocking a small amount of light from the star, like a shadow of the planet. Even though transits have already been observed for thousands of other extra-solar planets, K2-3d is important because there is a big chance that it might harbor extraterrestrial life.

Researchers planned to use a highly specialized telescope to check the atmosphere of the planet. This would enable them to accurately identify molecules and gases related to life, such as oxygen.

An extra-solar planet, K2-3d with a distance of 150 lightyears, is about1.5 times the size of the planet Earth and has approximately the same temperature. It revolves around its parent star, which is nearly half the size of the Sun. It takes the planet a total of 45 days to orbit around its star, reported HNGN.

Meanwhile, NASA's K2 mission had to identify several potentially habitable planets with transiting orbits. But, most of them are far away from Earth and because of that appear fainter. This makes K2-3d a special object for the scientists to observe, because of its close proximity and brighter appearance from a telescope placed on Earth.

It is important to emphasize that at present, scientists have observed a decrease in brightness during transit if fractionally small. The team, however, plans to use more specialized telescopes in the future to establish a relationship between reduction in brightness and wavelength. This will enable them to study the composition of the planet's atmosphere.

Will they be able to finally discover extra-terrestrial life in there? Will this be the mission that will prove the existence of aliens?