Sunday, July 23, 2017

This rocky ‘super-Earth’ planet may be in just the right spot for hosting life

This rocky ‘super-Earth’ planet may be in just the right spot for hosting life:

In a rare find, a rocky “super-Earth” planet has been located orbiting around a cool dwarf star — and it’s just a mere 39 light years away. The world gets its “super” nickname because it’s a bit bigger and slightly more massive than our own planet. But just like Earth, this planet sits in the coveted habitable zone, the region around a star where temperatures are just right for liquid water to pool on a planet’s surface. That make this place an exciting candidate in the search for life outside our Solar System.

Dubbed LHS 1140b, the planet was first spotted in September 2014 by a group of telescopes in the mountains of southern Chile. The telescopes, part of the MEarth-South telescope array, saw the planet as it passed in front of its...

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