A Stunning New Discovery Emerges From a Nearby Red Dwarf Star

They are pretty close to the same size as our planet, but are they habitable?

Transcript

00:00are there other planets like ours so far not so much but astronomers are always on the lookout

00:09for earth-like planets that may harbor life and recently astronomers discovered two such planets

00:14or what are often referred to as super earths and they're actually pretty close super earths

00:19are planets that are larger than ours but smaller than ice giants like neptune they're also rocky

00:24and mineral laden rather than made of gas like jupiter and recently the two exoplanets which

00:29are 1.2 and 1.5 times the size of earth were discovered orbiting a red dwarf star only 33

00:35light years away the planets were discovered when they passed between human telescopes and their own

00:39star called hd 260 655 blocking the red dwarf's light and allowing us to detect them and they

00:46do that quite frequently as a year on either of the orbiting worlds is 2.8 and 5.7 earth days

00:52respectively as that's how long it takes each of them to travel around the dim star but that also

00:56means they aren't likely habitable as they're too close to their star to maintain liquid water

01:01with each planet likely having surface temperatures of 543 degrees and 816 degrees fahrenheit respectively