The Discovery of 15 New Earth-Like Planets Raises Hope to Find Liquid Water

As the resources of our planet are slowly but surely getting exhausted, for it may be oil, gold, copper or drinking water for that matter, it is now becoming evident that as our population and technology grows, our planet will eventually fail to accommodate our needs.

Astronomers all around the world have already begun their quest of finding us a new “home” which meets the criteria of sustaining us like earth does so effortlessly. In an interesting discovery, a group led by Hirano of Tokyo Institute of Technology, stumbled upon a bright red-dwarf (K2-155), that fosters 15 exo-planets, 3 of which are “Super-Earths”.

K2-155 is about 200 light years away from our home, and among all its planets, the planet
K2-155d, which is 1.6 times the size of the earth is believed to be in the “Goldilocks” zone, just warm enough for water to exist in its liquid form. These conclusions are based on the data collected by the Kepler Space Observatory.

Further studies have to be carried out to precisely conclude whether liquid water or perhaps life itself exists on K2-155D.  "Red dwarf systems, especially coolest red dwarfs, are just beginning to be investigated, so they are very exciting targets for future exoplanet research," Hirano said.

One definitive fact which can be drawn from this study is that liquid water is the most valuable resource in the entire universe because where there’s water, there’s life.