This planet, which needs further confirmation, has a suitable distance from its star, allowing liquid water to exist, which means that there is likely to be life on it. Rene Heller, the head of the new study, said in a press release: "The combination of this planet twice smaller than the Earth and its sun-shaped main star makes it so special and familiar."
Her research team at Max Planck Institute for Solar System published a paper in Astronomy and Astrophysics last week, describing the pair of planets and stars.
At present, this candidate planet is called KOI-456.04. If other telescopes confirm its existence, this exoplanet will join the ranks of about 4,000 known planets outside the solar system. At first, people called it Kepler 160, and two planets were found around it, but new research shows that there are two others.
(NASA /JPL California Institute of Technology/Ames /MSSS/TAMU)
Above: An artist's arrangement of planets shows planets in habitable zones similar to Earth: from left, Kepler 22b, Kepler 69c, Kepler 452b, Kepler 62f and Kepler 186f. At the bottom of the list is the earth.
Why is it livable?
To be considered habitable, a planet must orbit a stable star for a certain distance and maintain a temperature suitable for liquid water.
It is estimated that there may be10 billion terrestrial planets in the Milky Way, but only 4,000 are confirmed as suitable, and most exoplanets do not meet the conditions for life. The researchers found that the orbital red dwarf was not stable enough. Red dwarfs are smaller and weaker than the sun and emit infrared radiation. They sometimes send out high-energy flares and blow up the surrounding planets.
Among the known exoplanets orbiting stars in the solar system, most exoplanets are much larger than the earth-usually about the size of Neptune (four times that of the earth). These larger planets tend to capture too much hydrogen in their atmosphere, so these gas giants will not keep liquid water.
This new candidate is still very promising.
This new discovery was made after astronomers re-examined the archived data of NSAS retired from Kepler mission in June 20 18. The telescope handed over the mission of exoplanet exploration to the TESS satellite telescope, which began to observe in August 20 18.
Since the volume of KOI-456.04 is less than twice that of the earth, it may mean that its atmospheric conditions are similar to ours. In addition, the star in the candidate orbit of the planet is about 1. 1 times the size of the sun, and its surface temperature is 5200 degrees Celsius (only 300 degrees Celsius lower than the sun). Stars also emit visible light like our sun.
According to the research of Max Planck Institute, if the atmosphere of KOI-456.04 is the same as that of the earth, that is, it has a slight greenhouse effect, then its average surface temperature is about 5 degrees Celsius, while the average temperature of the earth is 15 degrees Celsius.
The system is only 3000 light years away from our solar system.
Future space telescopes may further study this planet. NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency plan to launch the James Webb Space Telescope in 20021year, while the Plato Space Telescope of the European Space Agency plans to launch in 2026, which will focus on finding terrestrial planets orbiting sun-like stars.
relevant knowledge
Extrasolar planets, referred to as exoplanets, are planets that are located outside the solar system and do not revolve around the sun. By the end of June, 2020, there were 428 1 exoplanet, of which about 7 1.3% was discovered through the transit phenomenon. These planets belong to 3 163 planetary system, including 70 1 multi-planetary system. The Kepler mission has detected 65,438+08,000 planetary candidates, including 262 candidates for potential habitable areas.
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