Exoplanets or what is referred to as “Extra solar Planets”, the potential existence of extraterrestrial life and the search for earth-like planets were on the menu of a Scientific Conference held on Monday in Rabat at the Academy of the Moroccan Kingdom, as part of the cycle “Innovation & questions of the present time”.
This conference, a joint initiative of the Academy of the Kingdom, the Academy Hassan II of Science and Technology, and the Swiss embassy in celebration of the centenary of the Swiss diplomatic presence in Morocco, was held by the Swiss astronomer and Nobel prize in physics ‘’Michel Mayor’’, under the theme ‘’Other worlds in the cosmos? the search for planets similar to our earth and perhaps harboring life!’’.
“Scientists believe that the galaxy “the milky way” could have several billion planets, not counting the other galaxies,” Mr. Mayor noted, indicating that the probability of possible extraterrestrial life (even bacterial) is quite possible. In this regard, scientific research continues to evolve thanks to technological development and the means deployed in this field.
“Thus, considering the developments that science is experiencing, astronauts are able to observe the variation in the radial velocity of a star, to the nearest 20 centimeters per second”, he noted, stating that the Earth alone makes the Sun move by 8 cm per second.
“If we have discovered with Didier Queloz the first exoplanet taking place 26 years ago, we can say today that there are 5,000,” he said, noting that the majority of Exoplanets have a mass between one and ten times that of the Earth. “The data collected can also make assumptions about their nature, namely rocky, gaseous, etc,” he continued.
By Nouhaila El Bouhli
