admin 20 astronomical scientists from Japan and the US have found a planet with many Earth-like characteristics, orbiting a very “cool” red dwarf star.
The research was conducted by a team of scientists from many leading institutes, schools and research centers in Japan and the US such as Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan National Observatory, NASA…
Dubbed K2-415b, the new world 72 light-years away was first detected in 2017 by the Kepler space telescope, however its special properties have so far been revealed.
According to Sputnik, scientists analyzed the high resolution image and near-infrared spectrum of K2-415b and found it to be a rocky planet like Earth.
The planet has a mass of 1.3 to 5.7 Earth masses, with the highest probability being 3 Earth masses. It is one of the smallest exoplanets ever discovered in stars tens of light years or more away from us.
This size would keep it among the Earth-like planets and among the world in search of life in outer space.It orbits fairly close to its parent star, but this parent star is an M-type dwarf, a red dwarf, the coldest, smallest, and most numerous main sequence star in the Milky Way galaxy that contains Earth. The star K2-415 of this new planet has only 16% of our Sun’s mass.
“The small planets surrounding the M dwarf are a good laboratory for exploring the atmospheric diversity of rocky planets and the conditions under which a rocky planet might exist” – scientists say.
To further understand the planet and its habitability, scientists will need to understand its atmosphere, which is expected to be accomplished with the currently most powerful space telescope, NASA/ESA/CSA’s James Webb (US-Europe-Canada space agencies).
The study has just published online on ArXiv and is awaiting approval to be published officially in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal.
