New Habitable Planet Discovered

A team of astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy reported the existence of another habitable planet located “only” 36 light years away, that is 345.6 billion km. away.

This planet is called HD85512b and revolves around an orange dwarf in the Vela constellation. It is has right distance from its star and has the right mass to be included in the select list of the Earth-like planets found so far.

Hundreds of planets around distant stars have been discovered, but there are only four others, at least in theory, that could be very similar to ours, including the famous Gliese 581g and its orbiting companion Gliese 581d, its mass and distance to its sun make it a strong candidate for an habitable world.

The HD85512b was discovered using the radial velocity High Accuracy Planet Searcher (HARPS) mounted on the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. It is about three and a half times the mass of the Earth and is in the habitable zone of its star, the narrow orbit, too close or too far, allowing the existence of liquid water on its surface. In addition, its orbit is perfectly circular and stable, so its weather is not likely to go through abrupt changes and it is in a solar system at least one billion years older than ours (which has some 5,000 million years ago), which is more than enough time for life to develop with no problems.

“The distance is exactly at the right limit, to allow it to have liquid water,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, lead author of the research.”Compared to our solar system – adds the researcher, it would be a little farther than Venus is from our Sun.”

(MS)
Source: ABC