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A region with forming stars, located 210,000 light years away from Earth, captured by the Hubble telescope Image: AFP |
Five stars in our Milky Way may harbor life similar to Earth and possess intelligent civilizations like ours, according to Dr. Margaret Turnbull, an American astronomer from the Carnegie Institution in Washington.
Dr. Turnbull selected these five stars from a pool of 120,000 stars in the Milky Way that are situated near our solar system based on several criteria, including size, composition, age, and color, which make them resemble our Sun.
This selection is part of a list of ten stars that Dr. Turnbull compiled for the future project “Terrestrial Planet Finder/TPF” (Planet Finder for Earth-like Worlds), scheduled for launch in 2016 by NASA. The goal of this project is to search for and observe planets similar to Earth.
The five stars include: Beta Canum Venaticorum, located about 26 light years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici; 51 Pegasi, famous since 1995 for being the first planet discovered outside our solar system; and 16 Scorpii, located in the Scorpius constellation near the center of the Milky Way, considered a twin sister of the Sun… For a star to be deemed potentially habitable for humans, it must be at least 3 billion years old. Dr. Turnbull noted that this list is only a preliminary one, as it is quite difficult to rank stars based on their potential for human habitation.
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