Todays participants are thomas, a director at nasa headquarters in washington. Sean carey, the manager of the Spitzer Center in pasadena, california. Sarah, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of technology in cambridge. And nicole lewis. With that, thomas, start us off with the big news of the day. Thomas thank you. I have been the director for five months and i have been in a we at the science that we do here. We are changing lives every day. We stretch the imagination and oday is just that. I am excited to announce today that the doctor and his team have used our space telescope to determine seven earth sized planets orbiting about 40 lightyears away. What is more, as you can see in the illustration, is that three of these are in the habitable area where liquid water can pool on the surface. For the first time, we found as many terrestrial b planets and we can measure the masses and the radii of these earthsized planets. These are among the best planets to follow up to see the atmospheres and to look at the bio signatures, if there are any. The discovery gives us a hint that finding a second earth is just a matter of when. Scientists believe that, around every star, there could be 1, 3, 5, 7 planets. You can imagine how many worlds there are out there that could e habitable. What we really have is a major step forward towards answering one of these questions that is at the heart of so many of our philosophers questions. We are making a step forward and im excited for you to hear about that. Thank you. Can you tell us more about the findings . Sure. We use the space telescope to discover not one, not to, but seven earthsized planets and this is the first time that seven were found. The star is the leastmassive star type detected. These are smaller and cooler than the sun, but they are frequent. If you look at this illustration, you see the comparison between the asketball and the golf ball. The golf ball would be the other sun, which is much smaller and cooler. In this graphic, what you can see is planets that are formed around. Three of them are in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist and is most likely to exist on the surface of a rocky planet. N each of these planets what can you tell us about the distant planets . We have, thanks to the telescope, a measurement of the asses for six of them. For one of them, our measurement is strongly suggesting a waterrich composition. This is a planet in the habitable zone. They are probably always facing the star with the same side. So, if you look at this animation, you can see a view of the planets, with a permanent dayside and a permanent mate side. What is exciting about this system is that the planets are close to each other. If you are on the surface of one of these planets, you would have the view of the other planets. You would not see them like venus. As you can see, in the next illustration, you can see them as you see the moon. You could see the structures. They would be as large as the moon and even larger. It would be a wonderful view on these planets. Thank you. Can you give it an idea or more context to discovery and why this played such a vital role . I would like to say that, in my opinion, this is the most exciting discovery we have had in the almost 14 years of operation. You look at the discovery of the system and we started doing followup with groundbased telescopes and continuous observations. We were able to confirm to the planets in the initial discovery and we found five more planets. It is pretty exciting. Now, this is much brighter in the infrared than the visible and it makes it ideal to use spitzer, which is an infrared telescope. So, it was launched in 2003, but was never intended to study exoplanets. We had to do some engineering on the ground to come up with ways to allow spitzer to measure star brightness is 1000 times more precisely than we had imagined. We do not image the plans. He planets pass and we see the mount of light that the star is dimmed by. The dips that you see are the planets going in front of the star. The size of the dip tells you the size of the planets. When you see the different planets that orbit to around, you can measure the spacing between the transits and it tells you about how long the year is for the planets. When we know how long it takes to go around the star, we know the distance from the star and whether or not it is within the habitable zone. This is an interesting configuration of planets. They are close to each other and they tug and they pull each other. What it does is it changes the timing of the transit and it doesnt happen as regular. With that, we are able to measure the masses of the planets. We have the mass and we can ake an estimate on the density. From that, we can tell whether the planets are rocky, gaseous, or watery. What can you tell us about studying the atmospheres of these planets . They tell us a great deal about the formation and the evolution of the planets and the physical planets that occur on the surface and the air. They demonstrate whether the plan is habitable. We can study the atmospheres of planets using a technique that detects the fingerprints of different chemicals in the air of the planet. We are currently using the Hubble Space Telescope to study planets to determine if they have hydrogen or helium dominate atmospheres. If they dont, it gives us another push forward and the potential for those planets to support water on the surfaces. Hubble found that they did not have hydrogen or eliumdominated atmospheres. What do we know about these worlds . To give you a brief tour of this habitable zone, if you zoom out, you will see the seven planets. This blue region is the habitable zone. So, in this illustration, you see this interesting planet. It is close to the size of earth and it also receives about the same amount of light as earth does. You could have temperatures that are very similar similarsimilarvery similar to earth. Now, f has a nine day orbit and it receives the same amount of sunlight as mars. The final planet is g. G is the largest planet in the system and it is 13 larger than earth. It receives the same starlight as mars and the asteroid belt. We do not have the technology to travel to these planets, but how long would it take to travel to . If we were able to travel at light speed, we would arrive in 39 years. A jet would take 44 million years. Wow. Why are these discovery so exciting . We have made a leap forward in the search for life on other orlds. It is not just one planets. It is several. If we did not have the zone right, we have many chances. In this planetary system, goldilocks has many sisters. We do not know much about the planets. We know about the masses, the sizes, the radiation. For now, we speculate. We have a new poster you can download from our website. As you can see, it has captured the experience info speculoos of how, from one planet, you could see the other planets in the sky. When there is one, there is more. This is an amazing system and we know that there must be many more out there and waiting to be found. What are astronomers doing o learn more about the system . Is the nearest ultrakool door star. This is a veritable laboratory or studying a very dim red star and astronomers go backandforth on the excitement about these worlds. Other people have fears and concerns and we get concerns bout radiation from the host star and things like that. Hopefully, we will find more of these systems around these ommon stars that we can study. In addition, in astronomy, when somebody makes a discovery like this, we put almost telescope that can follow up to followup. You have heard about hubble and kepler. They are exploring the system further and there is the telescope that was launched in 2018 and the reason these planets were so significant is that they were accessible and you can see the animation of it here. We will be able to study the atmosphere and assess the Greenhouse Gas content. Are these, indeed, the right temperature . We will even use this to study gases that do not belong that could be produced by life. Lets thank you. Before we going to questions and answers, do you have any closing thoughts . For me, this research is really in the gold rush phase. I just could not help but notice that the the last clause that was there is the same one from 1995. E have found dozens of planets in a habitable zone, but none with this many planets in the habitable zone. Going forward, the telescopes are launching and you talk about the james Webb Telescope and it is being planned right now. We are opening our lands and ur viewpoints in the universe. I do believe that many of the best telescopes that will give us the most information have yet to be invented. There are many things we do not know and many questions we have in observations and we look at these animations and nature is way more beautiful and amazing than what we have animated. The question is how we open up and see these things, how do we get data from that. At the end, it is all about that thought i have so often when i go to bed at night and i really imagine how the other worlds really look like. They are just like the earth and they have commonalities with the earth and you could imagine these worlds. T is only happening right now. It will be answered in this decade and the next decades. Thank you. With that, lets transition to questions. If you would like to ask a question, use the hashtag. All right. Wonderful. We have a lot of questions coming in. What is the total amount of possibly habitable planets that we have found . The total number is unknown and it depends on who you ask and how you count. There may be dozens of exoplanets that could be habitable, but they could be too hot or too big. We have to see the atmospheres and that is why those climates are so relevant. We can actually assess them in the near future. Wonderful. The next question comes from scott, who asks if there is any confirmation of water on the planetary bodies. There has not been any confirmation of water and it will take a lot of observations in the future to probe the atmosphere to see if we can detect water. It is fair that people are looking. This comes from matthew. Will this be one of the first observations and what about when the Mission Launches . I am fairly certain that there will be some observation of all of the planets. We are going to get that are measurements of the masses than hat we have currently. Ok. We are going to take a question on the phone line and then we will go back to social media. I was wondering about the fact that, being a red dwarf, it is able to support more lanets because of less radioactivity and solar flares. This is a main concern about this and they could have been eroded, but it is now quiet and not active. By observation, we really figured out the path of this planet and it was active. The great news is that we can observe in the future. Nature is usually smarter than e are. We will go back to social media here. This comes from our twitter user who asks on names for the planets. Names . Like a popular name . There are plenty of possibilities that are related to belgian beers. For now, we will call them e, f , g. Admittedly, we do not have a way to give a name to e xoplanets. Do they have any moons . We have no indication of a moon. It would be unlikely to have a oon. Maybe it could. We will see. There is still much news to come about the system. The tidal forces between these planets is not negligible. If there was water, there would he tidal forces. We have teeth. I have a question for sarah. Am looking at the planets and i assume they are close together and there are questions about whether you should consider these an ecosystem. Can we say the biosphere of these planets extends . Quite a wonderful question and we have not thought about it this far. I will back this up and say, if we want to think about intelligent civilization looking back, they may be aving a press conference saying that there are three habitable planets. Lets wait and see what is out there. Next on the phone lines, we have the associated press. Hello. I was wondering how many years you think it might take to have a real good handle on the atmospheres of these planets and i have a followup question. We could have a substantial amount of progress in the next ive years. We are starting with hubble and we are continuing the exploration of these atmospheres. We could see results in the early 20 20s. This is the first time seven earthsized planets have appeared around a star like that. What is the closest runnerup like that prior . I think it was two or three and no more. I dont remember. There are many kepler planets. Lets go back to social media. This is from twitter. What kind of instrument could be used to answer the question whether the planets have life . We have instruments that cover wavelengths from the near to further into the infrared spectrum. There is a lot of powerful spectrographs aboard and it will allow a technique i talked about earlier, covering a range where we can detect water, ethane, ozone, and oxygen. We can determine the potential f it harboring life. I want to add that we try to emphasize the capability and nature has to deliver. These red dwarf stars, we dont know what is out there. If there are atmospheres without clouds that have a substantial amount accumulation of gases, you will have no problem. If it is the opposite, it may be a while. We have a test mission and other groundbased searches. We hope that many more of these have chances to find a sign of life in the future. Wonderful. They next question is, is it possible to listen to the system . How do we learn as much as possible . It was already listened to and they had no artificial signal detected. It has been done, but there is no signal the tech did. The next question comes from our twitter user who asks, how long until we see a craft that can make the journey . It requires so many miracles on the way. You think about this and there ere 10 miracles to put together james webb. We had to put together a telescope and a thermal system that is a tennis court on the inside. You started managing your way forward and there is a question being asked about 100 miracles and some of them relate to nuclear propulsion, radiation protection, things that we are just starting to push at. There is a lot of work being done and it is not just because we have our eyes set on going to a star, it is that we want to get there faster and with more energy. This game is leaning forward and this is what i believe nasa is all about and it has led to this discovery in many ways. There have been a whole bunch of miracles and detectors. I would like to briefly mention our colleagues and you can see that they are planning ways to send thousands of tiny spacecraft flying by a near star. I just want to remind all of ou that we will probably not have a way to get there. We are here because we have space telescopes and we are big on remote sensing. That is what we have to work with and we are excited about the possibility of using our telescopes, rather than having to having we will have to leave the trip there to future generations. The next question comes from twitter and the question is about how old the planets are. The age of the star, we know it is. Very young. It is about half a billion years old. Hey dont see them evolving. This next question is from facebook live. What is the distance between these planets . What is the distance between e and the star . The distance between the planets is a few times between the earth and the moon. Were talking about millions of kilometers hundreds of millions of kilometers. For the planet e and the distance, it is much closer to the sun. Is the system the closest one to us with planets in the abitable zone . The closest one is proxima entauri. We do not know if it is a working planet, but it is in the habitable zone and it is only 4 light years away. It is the closest star, and fax. Unconventional tiger wants to know the range of the orbital periods. It is 1. 5 days to 20 days. A supershort period. You have the ratios. The periods are related by integer numbers. We have this showing and indicating that these planets should be trapped in this migration, but are in this eculiar configuration. They must have formed in an environment that was rich in ice and it should be reflected in the composition. Before we take more questions, i would like to talk to each of you about why the finding is so exciting to you ersonally. Yes, this is exciting for me, because it is a great opportunity to study earthsized planets and atmospheres in great details. We are trying to understand what the air is like on these planets outside of our solar system. When we started in exoplanets 20 years ago, we have we are excited because we see ourselves here as the roup of people, all of our colleagues, who are the pioneers in a search that will go on for many generations. This is really exciting. This is a personal xperience and the ability to do these observations made it not be clear that we were able o achieve the sites like this. It is very gratifying for my olleagues and i. We were able to pull this off and get great that a two scientists. O, i am very happy about this. When i went to study science, i switched to astronomy because it was the beginning of the exoplanets adventure and it was clear that we would be doing more than etecting planets that were unsuitable for life. We are getting there and it is exciting for me. To me, looking for new point of view of nasa science programs, you look at what is happening right now and the chemistry in recognition to look at that system and there is many other places like that and, on the serious side, we have already heard about the eal understanding with a tremendous amounts in a crescendo. His is the right time to ask that question right now. Thank you. Im afraid that is all the time we have left. Keep the questions coming and send them in at the hashtag. For more information and to download the app, go to nas a. Gov exoplanets. Follow us on social media. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National able satellite corp. 2016] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption contents and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org today nancy pelosi and Charles Schumer discuss the agenda for democrats one day before President Trump is set to speak. Live from the National Press club starting at 2 00 eastern. Later, a look at efforts to prevent opioid abuse among veteranss. That gets under way at 3 30 p. M. Eastern. You can also watch on line at cspan. Org or listen on the span radio app. Democratic congressman row cannesa represents californias Silicon Valley. He will describe the issues that matter most to the tech companies, their frustration with washington, and his goal to create more jobs through the companies in his district which include apple, google, tesla, among others. We have to figure out what the credentialing will look like for the jobs that are available. Not everything is going to require a fouryear degree. Im not as concerned about the folks getting fouryear degrees or phds. But what is going to get you a credential that will get you a job . I think the frg should be looking to credentials that actually are relate to employment and having conversationings and funding those type of programs. Watch the communicators tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan 2. Next, q a with Alexandra Wolfe. Wolfe announcer this week on q a, wall street journal columnist Alexandra Wolfe discusses her book valley of the gods, a Silicon Valley story. Brian Alexandra Wolfe, what is the valley of the gods . Alexandra it is a book about three fellows who won peter thiels thiel fellowship