SCIENTISTS FIND EARTH-LIKE EXOPLANET IN A HABITABLE ZONE AROUND ITS STAR

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Mon 06 February 2023:

Aliens may come invading the Earth or in peace, we never know. But the hint of potential danger has not stopped us from pointing our eyes and lenses at the vast expanse of space and wonder anyway. We scour the inky void for signs of life as well as for signs of planets that can potentially harbour life. Scientists have now found another almost Earth-like exoplanet that has the potential of harbouring life. Why? Because the planet lies in what is called ‘habitable zone’ around its star.

In our Solar System, Earth lies perfectly in the habitable zone.

Around any star, a habitable zone refers to a distance from the star at which water is able to exist in liquid form. In other words, things are neither too hot nor too cold in the habitable zone.

The planet that has been spotted now is almost the size of Earth. Only 1.36 times bigger. The planet has been named Wolf 1069b. It is just 31 light-years away from us. The planet has been found by a team led by Diana Kossakowski of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Germany.

“When we analysed the data of the star Wolf 1069, we discovered a clear, low-amplitude signal of what appears to be a planet of roughly Earth mass,” Kossakowski says.

“It orbits the star within 15.6 days at a distance equivalent to one-fifteenth of the separation between the Earth and the Sun.”

The planet is much closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. But the star it revolves around is a red dwarf, a category of stars usually less hot than the Sun.

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