NASA Discovered 700 Possible Solar Systems
ROBERTS: A new discovery way out the galaxy causing a real buzz here on the third rock from the sun. NASA's deep space eye in the sky found several planets that are similar in size to earth. But just because they are earth-sized doesn't mean they are earth-like.</s>CHETRY: Yes, scientists don't think the new planets can support life as we know it, but this new find could be the tip of the iceberg. Here to tell us more is William Borucki, principal investigator with NASA's Kepler Mission. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.</s>WILLIAM BORUCKI, PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR, NASA KEPLER MISSION: You're welcome. I'm glad to be here.</s>CHETRY: This is exciting, the deep-space probe discovering some 700 bodies, some could be new planets. Describe what they found and what it could mean.</s>BORUCKI: Well, Kepler mission is basically a spacecraft that orbits the sun, it measures the brightness of stars, and it has found 700 candidates. And candidates are systems that show dips in the brightness of the stars as a planet where the object crosses them. But on the other hand we know 50 percent of the time they are really false positives. That's to say one small star is crossing another star, two stars in the background. And so we need to look to the candidates with ground-based telescopes and find out which are really planets and which aren't. And so right now we have some 700 candidates, but we don't have 700 planets. What we have in the past -- I'm sorry, go ahead.</s>ROBERTS: I was just going to say, Bill, you have actually confirmed five planets all of them sort of being described relatively to the size of Jupiter, anything from half the size of Jupiter to twice as big. It is pretty generally held that planets of that size are gas giants and wouldn't be capable to sustain life. But have you found anything the same size and orbit as earth, something that could potentially sustain life?</s>BORUCKI: No, we haven't. It takes about three years of observation before you see enough transits. Orbits of a planet like the earth in an inhabitable star like the sun, we have not seen anything like that. The mission has only been operating for one year. And so if we are going to find anything, we have to wait three years. We have to wait two more years. But we find a lot of candidates that are three times the size of the earth, twice the size of the earth. We actually have one candidate that's 1.6 times the size of the earth. But these are in very short period orbits, so they are very hot. It's only after we -- Yes, go ahead.</s>CHETRY: There are just so many factor that is go into it. One is the size, and a lot of them are too close to the sun so they probably wouldn't be able to sustain life as we know it. But what are some of the other positives you found out of this that could yield information and discoveries that we have not seen before?</s>BORUCKI: I think the biggest thing is the fact that we find so many candidates. We have over 700. We believe about half of those will probably turn out to be planets, and that is dramatic. The other aspect is that many of these were much smaller than Neptune. Neptune is about four times the size of the earth. So that means we are talking about candidates, possible planets, that would mean much closer to the size of earth than we've ever seen before. And that's -- that's the dramatic (ph) -- a lot of them and they're smaller than Neptune.</s>ROBERTS: Right, you know Bill, even if we found something that was the same sort of relative size of earth and the same sort of orbit that might be capable of sustaining life, the distances we're talking about here are so great, that we'd never be to go there and actually check it out. So -- so what is the net effect of all of this research here on earth? Does it -- does it increase, let's say, the maybe factor when we are talking about life on other world?</s>BORUCKI: It's certainly the first step in doing that. We'd like to understand the extent of life on our galaxy. And if it turns out there are a lot of planets that are inhabitable zones (ph) of stars, and we think there may well be, then there's probably a lot of life in our galaxy. And they are just waiting for us to call up and say hello, we'd like to participate. If we find nothing, that means we might be alone. So it gives us a feeling of the extent of life -- of possible life in our galaxy. When we get the numbers, are there many earths or not?</s>CHETRY: Right. And that's what continues to fascinate all of us. William Borucki for us, the principal investigator with NASA's Kepler Mission; thanks for joining us this morning.</s>BORUCKI: You're welcome.</s>ROBERTS: You know too, when you talk about contacting life on other planets, every time you look out into the heavens you're looking back in time as much as tens of thousands of years. So even if there was somebody out there, would they be in a position to be broadcasting to us because you're looking at things coming from ten thousand years ago. It's all very fascinating, though. Severe storms soaking the Midwest; 100 degree-plus heat across the south. Rob Marciano has got the travel forecast coming right up for you. Stay with us.