Two new planets, the first ever that are about the size of earth
This illustrated graphic shows the two newfound Kepler-20 planets shown to scale with Earth and Venus.
Continuing with my quest to find if NASA, astronomers, and other planet discoverers and enthusiastically sharing their findings of new planets with the world or keeping them secret. I am motivated to research these discoveries, because people I know have become so wrapped up in the 2012 / end of the world / Nibiru mania that they actually believe there is a conspiracy to keep secret the discovery of one very special planet, Nibiru, that supposedly carries aliens who have been on earth before.
My experience with amateur astronomers and professional scientists is that they want to publish their discoveries as soon as possible so that someone else does not get the credit for their discovery. They do not keep their discoveries secret.
Above, find artist’s impressions of what these two newly discovered planets, the first ever found that are about the same size as earth, might look like. They are not photographs. These planets are 15,000 light years away where no earth satellite and therefore, no camera has ever gone before. The image was created through cooperation between NASA/JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories)), Cal Tech (California Institute of Technology) and T. Pyle (probably the artist).
New planets are discovered by the following process:
To discover the new planets, Fressin and his colleagues used NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which noticed the tiny dips in the parent star’s brightness when the planets passed in front of it, blocking some of its light (this is called the transit method). The researchers then used ground-based observatories to confirm that the planets actually exist by measuring minute wobbles in the star’s position caused by gravitational tugs from its planets.
By the way, the new planets are called “alien” planets not because they carry aliens, that is to say extraterrestrials, but because they are alien or foreign to earth’s solar system.
