Astronomers Confirm a Possibly Habitable World Just 20 Light-Years Away

Amaze Lab

This is what astronomers have named HD 20794 d. It’s an exoplanet that resides just 20 light-years outside our Solar System and while it might not look like much, experts say it has all the makings for biological life.

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00:00This is what astronomers have named HD 20794 D. It's an exoplanet that resides just 20

00:10light years outside our solar system. And while it might not look like much, experts

00:14say it has the makings for biological life. The planet orbits a star in what is called

00:19the Goldilocks zone, or an area at just the right distance to have liquid water. Liquid

00:23water is at the cornerstone of our understanding of life formation, meaning finding a planet

00:27within a certain distance from its star is the first thing astronomers look for. Too

00:31close and the water evaporates leaving a burnt wasteland. Too far and all of the water freezes.

00:36Luckily, the star at the center of this planet's system is a yellow dwarf, just like our own.

00:41However, there's a catch. The planet takes some 648 days to make a full orbit around

00:46its star, moving in a wide elliptical orbit, meaning it is only in the habitable zone some

00:50of the time. What's more, experts aren't sure about the density of the planet, so it could

00:54be gaseous instead of rocky. What we do know is that it's quite large, nearly six times

00:59the mass of Earth.

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