Finding a world like Earth elsewhere in the universe might mean looking for the right kind of solar system. A new discovery sheds light on what composition of planets might be necessary to support life.
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00:00ever wondered exactly what it would take for life to exist on some other planet in the universe
00:09an earth-like world is only the beginning scientists believe a solar system like ours
00:15with its particular makeup of planets and other rocky bodies is also vitally important science
00:21alert reports the discovery of a pair of worlds around a star eerily similar to our own sun
00:28could be the closest we've come to finding such a system even if it's 175 light years away
00:36astronomers peering through the european southern observatory's lucilla telescope identified two gas
00:42giants in its orbit one a jupiter analog and the other a super neptune weighing around 43 earths
00:51both in the optimistic habitable zone a distance from their host star that is just within a habitable
00:58temperature the star hip 104045 is a dead ringer for our own sun in terms of age mass radius and
01:08luminosity though the super neptune orbits a little too close for comfort it's not impossible that a
01:15small rocky world brimming with alien life could be hiding nearby within our solar system scientists
01:22believe jupiter plays an important role by shielding us from rocky bombardment it may have also been
01:28instrumental in helping other rocks reach earth during its early formation delivering ingredients
01:34essential for life the findings submitted to the monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
01:41give scientists a better understanding of the compositions of planetary systems necessary to
01:46support life so far we're like nothing else in the known universe the only one of our kind