UBC student discovers 17 alien worlds. One may be capable of hosting life!

[Judi Lynn]

Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist/Science Writer


Monday, March 2nd 2020, 6:43 pm - UBC student Michelle Kunimoto is becoming a veteran planet hunter

- video -

Whether you're a professional astronomer or a citizen scientist, discovering just one alien exoplanet is exciting, but how about 17 of them! Michelle Kunimoto, a PhD student in the University of British Columbia's Physics and Astronomy program, has done just that. Even more amazing, one of these potential alien worlds also has the potential to harbour life!

In a new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal last week, Kunimoto reports the discovery of these 17 'exoplanet candidates', along with her UBC PhD advisor Jaymie Matthews, and Henry Ngo from the National Research Council's Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Center. She made this discovery by running a special program that would look for what are known as 'transits', by automatically sifting through publicly-available data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

"Every time a planet passes in front of a star, it blocks a portion of that star's light and causes a temporary decrease in the star's brightness," Kunimoto said in a UBC press release. "By finding these dips, known as transits, you can start to piece together information about the planet, such as its size and how long it takes to orbit."



Michelle Kunimoto is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia's Physics and Astronomy department. Credit: UBC

One of the planets that Kunimoto found, which goes by the name KIC-7340288 b, orbits a star around 1,000 light years away from us, and according to her, it is roughly 1.5 times the size of Earth. At that size, this 'super-Earth' could have a rocky surface, similar to Earth's, rather than being a gassy planet like Neptune.

More:
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/ubc-student-discovers-17-alien-worlds-including-one-that-may-host-life

[mr_lebowski]

1. Cool! Also lol'd at 'a gassy planet' ... nt