Photo: archive, BGNES
A team of scientists from Heidelberg has discovered a new planet outside the solar system where life could theoretically exist. It is possible that there is water there, and that the temperatures are suitable for living beings, it says Mother well.
Scientists have been looking for signs of life in space – far from Earth – for years. Planets that orbit foreign stars and not the Sun – so-called exoplanets – are being searched for particularly intensively. To be habitable, these planets must have water, good UV protection, and moderate temperatures.
31 light years from Earth
A research team from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg has now managed, with the help of a special technology, to detect a planet that meets these conditions. The results were published in the specialized journal “Astronomy and Astrophysics”.
The planet, discovered by a team led by Diana Kosakovski within the German-Spanish CARMENES program, revolves around the red dwarf star “Wolf 1069” (“Wolf 1069”), which is why it is called “Wolf 1069 b”. It is 31 light-years away from Earth, respectively, the flight there with a rocket would take about 600,000 years.
How was the discovery made?
Exoplanets have been discovered before, the first in 1995 by two Swiss astronomers, and more than 5,000 more since then. But only 1.5 percent of these planets are similar in size to Earth, and only about a dozen are likely to have water. which would create conditions for life, we read in an ARD publication.
Astronomers in Heidelberg, Germany, took advantage of the fact that not only do stars have gravity, but the planets in their orbits also exert gravitational forces on the star, which causes the star to appear redder and bluer when observed than if it stands motionless in its place in space, the head of the research team, Diana Kosakovski, explained to the German publication.
These color fluctuations are imperceptible to the naked eye, but can be detected with a spectrograph that examines the so-called radial velocity. From this, scientists conclude that there is a planet in the orbit of the star “Wolf 1069”.
What is “Wolf 1069 b”?
The data even allowed to calculate the mass of this planet, which is approximately the same as the Earth, but it rotates much faster than the Earth – it makes one revolution around its star in 15.6 days. There is also another difference – the exoplanet rotates synchronously around its star, i.e. it always faces the same side towards it, which means that there is no day and night on it like on Earth.
However, how things are exactly on “Wolf 1069 b” cannot be ascertained even with the best telescope due to the great distance and limited dimensions of the planet. The James Webb Space Telescope has already successfully determined the composition of the atmosphere of an exoplanet. So far they have only been searched for within a 6,000-year radius around the solar system, but there may be countless more in the Milky Way.
Through methods such as the radial velocity study, more exoplanets can be discovered and studied more precisely in the future through advanced technologies. Kosakovsky quoted by ARD suggests that in the next 20 years it will be possible to find out if there is extraterrestrial life – for example, on “Wolf 1069 b”, if the prerequisites for this are true.
Is the atmosphere habitable?
Wolf 1069 b is much closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun. Respectively, the temperatures are probably too high for the planet to be habitable. But compared to the sun, “Wolf 1069” has a colder surface and the radiation of this star is weaker, i.e. living conditions may still exist.
The newly discovered planet is definitely among the 20 most promising candidates on the list of possible places with extraterrestrial life, says Diana Kosakovski for ARD. Her argument – Wolf 1069 b could most likely maintain a magnetic field, which is necessary to protect living things from the star’s harmful radiation.
In addition, thanks to the magnetic field, the planet may also have an atmosphere with temperatures favorable to life. According to the calculations of the Heidelberg scientists, if the atmosphere of “Wolf 1069 b” is similar to the Earth’s, then the average temperature would be 13 degrees.
