A historic discovery of science and technology, marking the time when people went beyond our Milky Way.
Specified human planets – including candidates thousands of light years away – share a common characteristic. Everything is on the scale of the Milky Way.
But as you probably know, the universe has a multitude of different galaxies, the Milky Way is just one part. However, the planets of other galaxies are not visible to humans.
Scientists first discovered planets belonging to another galaxy
However, everything has changed. Recently, for the first time in history, astronomers published a list of planets that lie outside our galaxy. The general public belongs to data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
As noted, the new planets vary in size, from the size of the Moon to the size of Jupiter. And the galaxy they’re in is 3.8 billion light years away.
“We are very excited about this discovery. This is the first time that planets outside of our own galaxies have been discovered,” said Professor Xinyu Dai, University of Oklahoma astrophysicist.
More specifically, the experts analyzed an astronomical phenomenon called a “microlens”. It is the phenomenon of the light emitted by stars or quasars at a very great distance bent by gravity from another celestial body. It could be another star or a cosmic black hole.
If the light source is blocked, the obstruction will look like a lens, creating a spectral disk. The brightness of the spectrum will be affected if another planet is present. And the analysis of these spectra is also the only way at present that allows us to identify very distant planets.
This effect was predicted by Einstein in the theory of relativity, so the “spectral disk” is also known as the “Einstein disk”.
“This is an example of how ‘the power’ of micro-lens analysis can be achieved” – says Dr. Eduardo Guerras, associate professor Dai.
“This galaxy is 3.8 billion light years away from us, and we certainly don’t have a chance to see it directly, not even with the most terrifying periscope ever imaginable.”
“However, we can study them, know their existence and even measure their size, mass and size.”
“We analyzed the signals by modeling the data, to determine the size of the planets.”
