A team of astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), using the observations of the MEarth-South robotic telescope set, located in Cerro Tololo (Chile), has discovered a new exoplanet very similar to Earth and that is in our cosmic neighborhood, “only” 39 light years away . The study has been published in the journal Nature .
The object, named GJ 1132b, is a rocky planet, very similar in size to our planet and orbiting a small star called Gliese 1132. Its closeness to Earth is such (it is three times closer than any other planet discovered up to now) that we can study the composition and dynamics of its atmosphere. However, it is probably uninhabitable because it seems too hot to contain life (it receives 19 times more radiation than Earth from the Sun and its temperature would be around 260ºC) but cold enough to preserve its atmosphere.
According to experts, the radius of this planet, presumably made up of iron and rock, is 1.2 times greater than that of Earth and it transits in front of its star at 39 light years. This star belongs to the group of M dwarfs (red dwarfs) or hydrogen stars less than 60% the size of the Sun and which represent the most frequent stars in our galaxy.
“Our galaxy spans about 100,000 light-years, so that star is definitely in our solar neighborhood. If we find that this hot planet has managed to cling to its atmosphere for billions of years, it bodes well for the long-term goal of studying colder planets that could have life. We finally have a goal to point our telescopes, and to analyze much better how a rocky exoplanet works and what makes it work ”, explains Zachory Berta-Thompson, co-author of the study.
