Scientists Discover Another Exoplanet

An international team of astronomers announced on Thursday the discovery of a new potentially habitable exoplanet, bringing the number of planets outside our solar system detected by the scientific community to four.

"This rocky planet is the new and best candidate for holding liquid water on its surface and could support life as we know it," explained Guillem Anglada-Escudé, head of the team working at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington.

This planet (GJ 667Cc) is in orbit around a star named GJ 667C, located about 22 light-years from Earth (one light-year is equivalent to 9.460 billion km).

It circles its star in 28 days and has a minimum mass 4,5 times that of Earth. It is also about 50% heavier than our planet.

The planet lies at a distance from its star in a "habitable zone", where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold, allowing water to remain in a liquid state.

another planet

The researchers also found evidence to suggest that at least one other exoplanet, perhaps as many as three, are orbiting the same star. This star is part of a star system that has three stars.

The discovery proves that potentially habitable planets can form in a wider range of environments than we previously thought, note the authors of this discovery due to be published in the Letters of the Journal of Astrophysics.

The manuscript will be published on the internet on the website. The astronomers used public data from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile which they analyzed according to a new method. They incorporated measurements taken with telescopes at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.