Researchers have revealed a newfound alien planet might be able to support life – and say it is just 16 light years away.
Called Gliese 832c, it is a ‘super-Earth’ at least five times as massive as our planet.
The researchers say it might be the closest in terms of conditions ever found – and may even have Earth-like temperatures, albeit with large seasonal shifts.
An international team of astronomers says the exoplanet is in the star Gliese 832’s ‘habitable zone,’ the just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist on a world’s surface.
Gliese 832c orbits its host star every 36 days.
However, the host star is a red dwarf that’s much dimmer and cooler than our sun, so Gliese 832c receives about as much stellar energy as Earth does, despite orbiting much closer to its parent, researchers said.
‘This makes Gliese 832 c one of the top three most Earth-like planets and the closest one to Earth of all three, a prime object for follow-up observations,’ said Abel Mendez Torres, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.
‘The planet might have Earth-like temperatures, albeit with large seasonal shifts, given a similar terrestrial atmosphere.’
However, other unknowns such as the bulk composition and atmosphere of the planet could make this world quite different to Earth and non-habitable, they warn.
‘So far, the two planets of Gliese 832 are a scaled-down version of our own Solar System, with an inner potentially Earth-like planet and an outer Jupiter-like giant planet,’ the team wrote.
‘The giant planet may well played a similar dynamical role in the Gliese 832 system to that played by Jupiter in our Solar System. ‘
This star is already known to harbour a cold Jupiter-like planet, Gliese 832 b, discovered on 2009. The new planet, Gliese 832 c, was added to the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog along with a total of 23 objects of interest.
The number of planets in the catalogue has almost doubled this year alone.
