Scientists discover one of the most similar planets to our earth

After the discovery of Kepler-186f and Gliese-667Cf, among others, scientists are excited to confirm another exoplanet that is very similar to ours. An international team of astronomers discovered this exoplanet in the habitable zone of star Gliese 832, containing the distances that could allow liquid water to exist on its surface.

The planet in question is called the Gliese 832c, which is located 16 light years from Earth, but is much larger than our world. It is like a "super Earth", having at least five times the mass of our planet and orbiting around its parent star every 36 days.

However, its parent star is a red dwarf that is much darker and colder than our beloved Sun. But the Gliese 832c receives on average as much stellar energy as Earth, though it orbits much closer. of your star.

Researches

Of all the exoplanets ever discovered and compared to our Earth, in fact, the Gliese 832c is one of the most similar, according to a research metric used by astronomers - according to Space.com Abel Mendez Torres, director of the Housing Laboratory Planetarium of the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo.

"The Gliese 832c Earth Similarity Index (ESI) (ESI = 0.81) is comparable to Gliese-667Cc (ESI = 0.84) and Kepler-62e (ESI = 0.83), " Mendez wrote in a statement. to the press on June 25th. It is noteworthy that a perfect "Twin Earth" would have an ESI of 1.

"This makes the Gliese-832c one of the top three most Earth-like planets according to the ESI and the closest Earth to all three - a prime object for follow-up observations, " added Abel Mendez.

A team led by Robert Wittenmyer of the University of New South Wales in Australia discovered Gliese-832c for noticing the planet's small gravity fluctuations induced by its parent star's movement.

They spotted these oscillations in data collected by three separate instruments: the spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian telescope at University College London Echelle in Australia, spectrograph on the Magellan II telescope in Chile, and the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) in La Silla, also in Chile.

But this is not the first planet found in the orbit of this red dwarf. The other, the Gliese-832b, was discovered in 2009 as a gas giant that orbits much further, taking about nine years to complete an orbit.

warm

However, it is not entirely clear at the moment how many ways the Gliese-832c Gliese resembles Earth. But astronomers believe there are similarities, but they also think it is warmer, suffering from a greenhouse effect.

According to them, the mass of Gliese-832c suggests that this exoplanet probably has a much denser atmosphere than Earth's, which could make its climate hot and volatile. If so, it may look even more like a "super Venus."

"If the planet has an Earth-like atmosphere, it may be possible to survive, even though the seasonal changes would be extreme, " said Professor Chris Tinney of the University of South Wales. Anyway, Gliese-832c is still one of the most Earth-like planets ever found.