Kepler Space Telescope Finds First Hot Exoplanets

National Geographic News: “Five New Planets Found; Hotter Than Molten Lava” Hot, hot, hot, hot, and hot—meet the first exoplanets found by NASA’s Kepler space telescope.

The five planets—dubbed Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b, and 8b—are the first discovered by the Kepler Mission, which launched last March. They were originally discovered shortly after the telescope’s launch, and their existence has since been confirmed by separate methods. The telescope has also identified several hundred other candidate exoplanets yet to be confirmed.

The telescope has also identified several hundred other candidate exoplanets yet to be confirmed.

But for evolutionists searching for earth-like worlds outside our solar system, the newly found planets fail to fit the bill. Because each planet orbits close to its host star, their temperatures range from 2,000 to 3,000?F (1,090 to 1,650 C)—hotter than molten lava. As such, they are “certainly no place to look for life,” emphasized Kepler principal investigator William Borucki. Nonetheless, the scientists are glad Kepler is working properly.

Also interesting is the low density of some of the new worlds. Kepler 5b is less dense than water, while Kepler 7b has approximately the density of Styrofoam. National Geographic News offers an informative illustration showing the newly found planets’ temperatures and sizes relative to some planets in our own solar system.

Scientists also announced a new hypothesis on the origin of super-hot planet CoRoT-7b, which we first discussed last February and further in September. BBC News reports on research suggesting the planet began as a gas giant, but had “much of its mass boiled away by [its nearby host] star’s heat.” Additionally, scientists believe the planet could be a literal hotbed of volcanic activity. So while each new exoplanet seems to present a unique riddle, the question of whether life exists on any found so far is still rejected even by most evolutionists.

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