\u00b4Super-Earth\u00b4 orbiting nearby star boosts search for extra-solar life<\/h4>\n

\u00b4Super-Earth\u00b4 orbiting nearby star boosts search for extra-solar life:\u00a0Astronomers on Wednesday announced the discovery of a “super-Earth” orbiting a nearby star which may offer the most promising target yet in the search for life beyond the Solar System.<\/p>\n

Named LHS 1140b, the planet orbits a star 40 light years away, circling it in the coveted “Goldilocks” zone.<\/p>\n

This is the distance from a star where the temperature is not too hot, nor too cold, but just right.<\/p>\n

So if there is water, the stuff of life, it can exist encouragingly in liquid form and not as rock-solid ice or vapour.<\/p>\n

Previous worlds in this temperate zone have already been spotted, notably a clutch unveiled just two months ago to great fanfare.<\/p>\n

But LHS 1140b is exceptional because of its location. Astronomers have a relatively grandstand view of it, and already some beguiling things are known.<\/p>\n

One way to hunt exoplanets, a field launched a quarter of a century ago, is to analyse tiny dips in starlight that occur when a planet transits in front of its star.<\/p>\n

From these minute changes, useful but sketchy details can be gleaned about the passing object.<\/p>\n

In the case of LHS 1140b, the starlight is bright, the orbit is only 25 days and the planet is seen almost edge-on from Earth.<\/p>\n

As a result, astronomers have been able to get close, frequent looks at the all-important light signature — a big plus in the drive to figure out a planet\u00b4s size, mass and possible atmosphere.<\/p>\n

“This is the most exciting exoplanet I\u00b4ve seen in decades,” said Jason Dittmann of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team.<\/p>\n

“We could hardly hope for a better target to perform one of the biggest quests in science — searching for evidence of life beyond Earth.”<\/p>\n

The planet\u00b4s orbit is 10 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun, according to early measurements.<\/p>\n

In our Solar System, such a planet would be so scorched that any atmosphere and surface water would be stripped away.<\/p>\n

But red dwarves are much smaller and cooler than our Sun — LHS 1140b receives only half as much sunlight as we do.<\/p>\n

Early measurements suggest it is about five billion years old, or about 500 million years more than the Earth, and has a diameter about 1.4 times the size of our planet.<\/p>\n

However, its mass is around seven times bigger than Earth\u00b4s, which means it is dense.<\/p>\n

Rather than being a planet made of gas, it is thus probably rocky with a dense iron core, and the neighbouring “red dwarf” seems benign and stable. Both are ticks in the theoretical boxes for habitable worlds.<\/p>\n

A Harvard team was first to spot the telltale dips in light from the star. HARP, a powerful European telescope in Silla, Chile, was then trained on the find to make the crucial follow-up observations.<\/p>\n

On February 22, other researchers said they had discovered seven planets, similar in size and mass to Earth, near an “ultracool” red dwarf called Trappist-1, 39 light years from Earth.<\/p>\n

All seven of Trappist-1\u00b4s planets are considered potential candidates for having water in some form, but the chances are highest for three located in the Goldilocks zone.<\/p>\n

Xavier Bonfils, an astronomer at the Observatory of the Sciences of the Universe in Grenoble, France, said LHS 1140b now “joins Trappist-1 at the head of the rankings.”<\/p>\n

“We are very excited by this discovery. It\u00b4s a super opportunity,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n

The next step will be to see if the planet has an atmosphere — a goal that should be hugely helped by the James Webb orbital telescope, due to be launched in October 2018 as a successor to the fabled Hubble.<\/p>\n

But it could take several more years to know the atmosphere\u00b4s chemical composition, which will be sifted for clues of life, or the potential for it.<\/p>\n

According to the NASA Exoplanet Archive, the tally of confirmed exoplanets stands at 3,475.<\/p>\n

Only handfuls have a mass similar to that of Earth and orbit the temperate zone.<\/p>\n

However, the shortlist is beginning to show intriguing variety, said Bonfils.<\/p>\n

“We are multiplying opportunities for looking for the place where life may have emerged elsewhere in the Universe,” he said.<\/p>\n

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\u00b4Super-Earth\u00b4 orbiting nearby star boosts search for extra-solar life \u00b4Super-Earth\u00b4 orbiting nearby star boosts search for extra-solar life:\u00a0Astronomers on Wednesday announced the discovery of a “super-Earth” orbiting a nearby star which may offer the most promising target yet in the search for life beyond the Solar System. Named LHS 1140b, the planet orbits a star […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":9278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4132],"tags":[362,5398,5433,4632],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n