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Study suggests worlds may be life sites

OXFORD, England, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- New planet candidates orbiting in the habitable zones of other stars suggest a "traffic jam" of worlds in such regions, British and U.S. scientists say.

Volunteers using the Planethunters.org website, part of the Oxford University-led Zooniverse project, have discovered 15 new planet candidates, and one of them, a Jupiter-sized world dubbed PH2 b, has been confirmed as a planet by follow-up observations by the Keck telescope in Hawaii, an Oxford release reported Monday.

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"There's an obsession with finding Earth-like planets but what we are discovering, with planets such as PH2 b, is far stranger," Zooniverse leader Chris Lintott said.

"Jupiter has several large water-rich moons -- imagine dragging that system into the comfortably warm region where the Earth is. If such a planet had Earth size moons, we'd see not Europa and Callisto but worlds with rivers, lakes and all sorts of habitats -- a surprising scenario that might just be common."

Moons often accompany larger planets, the researchers said.

"We can speculate that PH2 b might have a rocky moon that would be suitable for life," lead study author Ji Wang of Yale University said.

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"I can't wait for the day when astronomers report detecting signs of life on other worlds instead of just locating potentially habitable environments. That could happen any day now."

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