An international team of astronomers, with the help of space and ground telescopes, has discovered a world similar to our planet, in the so-called habitable zone, which allows water to exist in liquid form on the body’s surface. By cosmic standards, the exoplanet is fairly close to Earth and is likely a rocky world with a climate suitable for life. Astronomers very rarely discover such worlds.

In 2009, American engineers placed NASA’s Kepler telescope into a heliocentric orbit designed to search for exoplanets. That is, planets outside the solar system.

The observatory operated in space until 2018. During nine years of operation, Kepler found 2,700 exoplanets. Some of these turned out to be candidates for terrestrial planets – rocky worlds with a mass of less than 10 Earth masses and located as far as 50 light-years from the Solar System.

Kepler not only expanded scientists’ knowledge about Earth-like exoplanets, but also showed them where to look for them. The vast majority of such worlds have been discovered by space telescopes near low-mass (7.5 to 50 percent of the Sun’s mass) red dwarfs – small, cold and relatively dim stars. This is the most common type of luminaire in our galaxy. Scientists estimate that 60 to 70 percent of the stars in the Milky Way are red dwarfs.

Since then, scientists have focused their search for Earth-like worlds on red dwarfs; These dwarfs turned out to be perfect for detecting exoplanets using the transit method. This method involves observing a planet transit across the disk of its parent star.

On May 23, an international team of astronomers published a press release and a scientific article in a journal. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical SocietyHere he talked about the discovery of an exoplanet very similar to Earth near the red dwarf Gliese 12.

Scientists made the discovery 40 light-years from Earth using data on the star’s radial velocity fluctuations obtained by the TESS and CHEOPS space telescopes, as well as the HARPS-N and TRES spectrographs mounted on the 3.6-meter ground-based telescope. at La Silla Observatory in Chile and at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s 1.5-meter Tillinghast Telescope on Mount Hopkins in Arizona.

The exoplanet has been named Gliese 12b, its radius is almost 1.1 times that of Earth and its mass is about 0.88 Earth masses. It is also relatively hot here: the temperature on the surface of this celestial body fluctuates between 42 degrees Celsius. At the same time, approximately 85 percent of the energy Venus receives from the Sun reaches the outer planet.

Gliese 12b completes a complete revolution around its star in 12.76 days. The distance from the exoplanet to the parent star is only seven percent of the average distance between the Sun and Earth, or about 10.5 million kilometers. This distance shows that Gliese 12b is in the habitable zone, a region where the exoplanet receives enough heat from its parent star and the water on its surface does not turn into ice but remains in liquid form.

According to the authors of the scientific paper, Gliese 12b is most likely a rocky world, as evidenced by its high density.

“We have discovered one of the closest rocky exoplanets to Earth, one that is easy to study and likely has temperatures suitable for life,” said Masayuki Kitsuhara, one of the study’s authors.

However, the only thing the authors of the scientific paper are not sure about is whether Gliese 12b has an atmosphere. Therefore, it is not yet clear whether an exoplanet could be suitable for life as we know it. Researchers are cautiously optimistic.

Red dwarfs, especially young ones, are quite “wild” unlike sun-like stars; They are distinguished by strong flash activity accompanied by X-ray radiation and coronal mass ejections. This radiation could kill life on exoplanets located near the red dwarf.

As for the star Gliese 12, which orbits the potentially habitable rocky world Gliese 12b, it is relatively quiet, meaning it has minimal brightness. So there is a possibility that the exoplanet has an atmosphere, and most likely a thin atmosphere. In this case, supporting a known life form will be sufficient.

In the future, a team of astronomers plans to observe the exoplanet using the James Webb Space Telescope. According to the researchers, the data obtained will enable us to understand whether Gliese 12b has an atmosphere and, if so, what it consists of. Note that scientists have discovered 34 terrestrial exoplanets by 2022, 11 of which are in the habitable zone. Gliese 12b will now join this. Judging by the list, astronomers very rarely discover such worlds.