The Gliese 832 system is an old acquaintance to exoplanet seekers. Around this star, a red dwarf about half the mass and radius of the Sun, two extrasolar worlds have so far been discovered.
In 2008, the discovery of Gliese 832 b, a Jupiter-like gas giant that follows a very long, practically circular orbit , was announced. Six years later, another much more interesting planet, Gliese 832 c.
This not only looks very similar to ours – although it is 5.4 times more massive – but it is located in the habitable zone of the system, at an adequate distance from its star so that it could host liquid water on its surface and, maybe life Some experts in planetary sciences suspect, however, that it may have a very dense atmosphere, making it actually more like Venus than Earth.
Now, a team of researchers, coordinated by the astrophysicist Suman Satyal, from the University of Texas, in Arlington, has included an article in the arXiv repository where it indicates that in Gliese 832 there could be another rocky world , which would be a little further away of the red dwarf that Gliese 832 c. Like this one, it would be a super-earth, between one and fifteen times more massive than our planet .
Satyal and his collaborators believe that the stability of the orbits that follow Gliese 832 b and c point to the existence of at least one other object between the two, although further studies will need to be carried out to confirm this.
Image: PHL @ UPR Arecibo / NASA / Stellarium
