'Super Earth' that may host alien life identified I Astronomers just spotted a new ‘Super Earth’ planet that feels a whole lot like home I A ‘Super Earth’ that may host alien life identified
The super-Earth exoplanet 55 Cancri e, depicted with its star in this artist's concept, likely has an atmosphere thicker than Earth's but with ingredients that could be similar to those of Earth's atmosphere.Credits: NASA
The exoplanet known as K2-18b has been described as being a potential 'Super-Earth' - a large rocky planet with the potential to support life.
Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada made the discovery by scouring data collected by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
They also discovered a new planet in the same solar system. Both planets orbit K2-18, a red-dwarf star located about 111 light-years away in the constellation Leo.
"Being able to measure the mass and density of K2-18b was tremendous, but to discover a new exoplanet was lucky and equally exciting," said Ryan Cloutier, a PhD student at the University of Toronto.
When the planet K2-18b was first discovered in 2015, it was found to be orbiting within the star's habitable zone, making it an ideal candidate to have liquid surface water, a key element in harbouring conditions for life as we know it.
"It was not a eureka moment because we still had to go through a checklist of things to do in order to verify the data," said Cloutier, lead author of the study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
"Once all the boxes were checked it sunk in that, wow, this actually is a planet," he said.
The dataset used by Cloutier and other researchers came from the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) using the ESO's 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla Observatory, in Chile.
In order to figure out whether K2-18b was a scaled-up version of Earth (mostly rock), or a scaled-down version of Neptune (mostly gas), researchers had to first figure out the planet's mass, using radial velocity measurements taken with HARPS.
After using a machine-learning approach to figure out the mass measurement, Cloutier and his team were able to determine the planet is either a mostly rocky planet with a small gaseous atmosphere - like Earth, but bigger - or a mostly water planet with a thick layer of ice on top of it.
"With the current data, we cannot distinguish between those two possibilities," Cloutier said.
"But with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we can probe the atmosphere and see whether it has an extensive atmosphere or it is a planet covered in water," he said.
"K2-18b is now one of the best targets for atmospheric study, it is going to the near top of the list," Rene Doyon, from Universite de Montreal Institute in Canada, added.
It was while looking through the data of K2-18b that Cloutier noticed something unusual.
In addition to a signal occurring every 39 days from the rotation of K2-18, and one taking place every 33 days from the orbit of K2-18b, he noticed a different signal occurring every nine days.
A little-known planet about 111 light years away could be a "scaled-up version of Earth" and may be able to host alien life, according to a study.
The exoplanet known as K2-18b has been described as being a potential 'Super-Earth' - a large rocky planet with the potential to support life.
Researchers at University of Toronto in Canada made the discovery by scouring data collected by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
They also discovered a new planet in the same solar system. Both planets orbit K2-18, a red-dwarf star located about 111 light-years away in the constellation Leo.
"Being able to measure the mass and density of K2-18b was tremendous, but to discover a new exoplanet was lucky and equally exciting," said Ryan Cloutier, a PhD student at University of Toronto.
When the planet K2-18b was first discovered in 2015, it was found to be orbiting within the star's habitable zone, making it an ideal candidate to have liquid surface water, a key element in harbouring conditions for life as we know it.
"It was not a eureka moment because we still had to go through a checklist of things to do in order to verify the data," said Cloutier, lead author of the study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
"Once all the boxes were checked it sunk in that, wow, this actually is a planet," he said.
The dataset used by Cloutier and other researchers came from the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) using the ESO's 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla Observatory, in Chile.
In order to figure out whether K2-18b was a scaled-up version of Earth (mostly rock), or a scaled-down version of Neptune (mostly gas), researchers had to first figure out the planet's mass, using radial velocity measurements taken with HARPS.
After using a machine-learning approach to figure out the mass measurement, Cloutier and his team were able to determine the planet is either a mostly rocky planet with a small gaseous atmosphere - like Earth, but bigger - or a mostly water planet with a thick layer of ice on top of it.
"With the current data, we cannot distinguish between those two possibilities," Cloutier said.
"But with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we can probe the atmosphere and see whether it has an extensive atmosphere or it is a planet covered in water," he said.
"K2-18b is now one of the best targets for atmospheric study, it is going to the near top of the list," Rene Doyon, from Universite de Montreal Institute in Canada, added.
It was while looking through the data of K2-18b that Cloutier noticed something unusual.
In addition to a signal occurring every 39 days from the rotation of K2-18, and one taking place every 33 days from the orbit of K2-18b, he noticed a different signal occurring every nine days.
Humans originated here on planet Earth and, all things considered, it’s a mighty nice place to be, but we won’t be able to stay here forever. Eventually, something will drive us from our home, and whether that something is our Sun’s eventual death, some type of natural cataclysm, or the damage we’ve caused to our own environment, we’re going to need to find a new home if we want humanity to live on. When we finally decide to make the move, a planet called K2-18b might be our destination.
K2-18b orbits the star K2-18 (see how that works?), and while it’s quite a ways from our own Solar System, it might be worth the trip. First discovered back in 2015, the planet is thought to lie within its star’s habitable zone, and if it does indeed have a rocky core as scientists believe, it may well have liquid water on its surface. If we’re particularly lucky, it might even already support life.
Renewed interest in K2-18b after its initial discovery is the result of new research that determined the planet was both larger than Earth, and likely rocky, which is enough to classify it as a “Super Earth.” The data that painted a more vivid picture of the planet was gathered by the HARPS planet-finding tool at the La Silla Observatory located in Chile.
At present, the researchers have been able to narrow down K2-18b’s makeup to just two possibilities. They believe that, due to its mass and size, it is either a rocky world like Earth with a gas atmosphere (which would be the most promising) or a water-heavy world covered by a thick layer of ice. In the not-so-distant future, NASA’s incredibly powerful James Webb Space Telescope could possibly get a better look at the planet and help answer that question.
In an unexpected surprise, while researching the behavior of K2-18b, astronomers noticed something that they thought might have been signal noise but eventually determined was an entirely new planet orbiting K2-18 much closer than K2-18b does. Dubbed K2-18c, the planet is also a Super Earth, though because of its proximity to its star it’s not likely that liquid water could exist on its surface, which makes it a lot less appealing to humans.
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