NASA discovers Earth-like planet that could support life with eternal summer – and is one of the ‘closest’ ever found

FINDING a planet that can support life like Earth is like trying to find a grain of sand in an infinitely expanding haystack.

And yet, despite the odds, astronomers may have just discovered a new, habitable world.

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About 40 light-years away, astronomers have discovered a rare planet with temperatures similar to Earth’s.

It’s a world with an eternal summer, where average temperatures are 42°C (107°F).

It orbits its version of the Sun – a cool, red dwarf – every 12.8 days.

Experts from NASA, the European Space Agency and several universities, including Warwick and Edinburgh, worked on the discovery.

It remains unclear whether the planet, dubbed Gliese 12b, shares an Earth-like atmosphere.

But astronomers consider it a good candidate for NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope to investigate further.

One of the main uses of the James Webb Telescope is to study the atmospheres of exoplanets.

“Excitingly, this planet is the closest planet to Earth in size and temperature that we know of,” Warwick astrophysicist Dr Thomas Wilson told the BBC.

“The light we see now is from 1984 (40 years ago) – that’s how long it took to reach us here on Earth.

“Planets like Gliese 12 b are very few and far between, so it’s very rare for us to be able to examine one so closely and learn about its atmosphere and temperature.”

Experts nicknamed it “exo-Venus”.

We know of only a few temperate Earth-like planets that are close enough to us and that meet other criteria necessary for this type of study.

Michael McElwain, research astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Once upon a time, Earth and Venus had similar empty atmospheres that were replenished by volcanic gases and materials from our solar system.

But what made the Earth habitable was the existence of water.

Although it is not the first Earth-like exoplanet to be discovered, NASA estimates that it is one of a small number of similar worlds.

“We know of only a handful of temperate Earth-like planets that are close enough to us that meet other criteria needed for this type of study, called transmission spectroscopy, using current facilities,” said Michael McElwain, a research astrophysicist at Goddard. Space from NASA. Flight Center, he said.

“To better understand the diversity of atmospheres and the evolutionary outcomes of these planets, we need more examples like Gliese 12 b.”

It is approximately the same distance from Earth as TRAPPIST-1, the largest Earth-sized exoplanet system ever discovered.