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A potentially habitable planet the size of Earth has been discovered just 40 light-years away

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A potentially habitable exoplanet roughly similar in size to Earth has been found in a system located 40 light-years away, according to a new study.

The planet is about the size of Venus, slightly smaller than Earth, and could be temperate enough to support life, researchers said.

Nicknamed Gliese 12 b, the planet takes 12.8 days to orbit a star that is 27% the size of the Sun. It is not yet known whether the exoplanet has an atmosphere.

But the scientists behind the study, published Thursday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, estimated that Gliese 12 b has a surface temperature of about 107 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius). Although hot, this temperature is lower than that of most of the thousands of exoplanets discovered so far.

“Gliese 12 b may be at the right temperature for liquid water to accumulate on its surface, and this is important because we tend to think of liquid water as an essential ingredient for life as we know it,” Shishir Dholakia, one of the authors of the study and a PhD student at the University of Southern Queensland’s Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.

Researchers are eager to take a closer look at the exoplanet, including with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescopewhich was launched into space in 2021 and is equipped with a sophisticated set of instruments capable of studying exoplanet atmospheres.

Scientists want to determine whether the planet has an atmosphere similar to Earth’s, or whether its atmosphere is as extreme and hostile as that of Venus. Alternatively, Gliese 12 b could have no atmosphere at all, or one that is unfamiliar and not seen in our own solar system, they said.

The findings could help researchers better understand the factors that make exoplanets potentially habitable. The observations could also shed light on how our solar system evolved.

“Because Gliese 12 b is between the temperatures of Earth and Venus, its atmosphere can teach us a lot about the habitability paths that planets take as they develop,” said study co-author Larissa Palethorpe, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh and University College London. , said in a statement.

Gliese 12 b was discovered using data from NASA’s transiting exoplanet survey satellite, which is designed to observe a large section of the sky for about a month at a time. The space telescope, launched into space in 2018, Look for periodic changes in brightness of tens of thousands of stars.

If a star dims at regular intervals, it could be a sign that a planet is orbiting the star, passing in front of it and temporarily obscuring its light.

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with



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