The number of potentially habitable planets that scientists have found is truly astonishing. For example thelast is only 31 light-years away and the good news is that it’s the size of Earth… and orbits at a distance from its star that could harbor life.
They currently have been more than 5,200 exoplanets confirmed and less than 1.5% of these have masses less than that of two lands. In particular, a team of astronomers led by Diana Kossakowski of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Germany has discovered a red dwarf, called Wolf 1069, orbited by a planet called Wolf 1069b.
“When we analyzed the data from the star Wolf 1069, we discovered a clear low-amplitude signal of what appears to be a planet of about the Earth’s massKossakowski continues.It orbits the star within 15.6 days at a distance equivalent to one fifteenth of the separation between the Earth and the Sun.“
Although Wolf 1069b is 15 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun, the radiation it receives is about 65% of that which our planet receives from the Sun (by the way, what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning?). Currently the celestial body is blocked, like our moon, and shows only one face towards the star. Research shows such worlds may still be habitable, particularly around the terminator, or the twilight line between night and day.
A simulated temperature map of the planet, however, shows that liquid water is more likely to be present in the region directly facing the star.
