PremiumListen to this article |
The presence of a super-Earth exoplanet has recently come to light that is found it be within the ‘habitable zone’ of its star. But the real question is - is it really habitable.
The exoplanet goes by the Ross 508b, and is about 36.5 light-years away from us. It is about four times bigger than earth. As per experts, the exoplanet is ‘likely to be terrestrial, or rocky, rather than gaseous.’
Ross 508b orbits around its star every 10.75 days. Though it seems really close to the star, the sun it orbits is much fainter than ours. “At that distance, the stellar radiation that hits Ross 508 b is just 1.4 times the solar radiation that hits Earth. This places the exoplanet very close to the outside inner edge of its star's habitable zone," quoted space science journal ScienceAlert.
The exoplanet is unlikely to be habitable for life as we know it, however, the discovery demonstrates the efficacy of the techniques used to locate small planets around dim stars.
The hunt for habitable exoplanets is stymied somewhat by the very nature of what we believe those exoplanets to be like. The only template we have is Earth: a relatively small planet, orbiting at a distance from its star where temperatures are conducive to liquid water on the surface. This is what's known as the 'habitable zone'.
Those aren't the only factors at play, obviously – Mars falls inside the Sun's habitable zone, for instance – but they're the easiest ones to screen for.
The exoplanet was discovered while following the movement of a tiny group of stars. It was found by using the NOAJ Subaru Telescope