iStockphoto
A recently discovered exoplanet, a planet that exists beyond our solar system, called GJ 251c is a super-Earth located just 18 light-years away from our planet. Bonus: it’s in its star’s “habitable zone,” which means it may be home to alien life.
“We look for these types of planets because they are our best chance at finding life elsewhere,” said Suvrath Mahadevan, a professor of astronomy at Penn State University and co-author of a paper covering the discovery. “The exoplanet is in the habitable or the ‘Goldilocks Zone,’ the right distance from its star that liquid water could exist on its surface, if it has the right atmosphere.”
Exoplanet GJ 251c has been labeled a “super-Earth” because data suggest it has a minimum mass of at least 3.84 times that of Earth and is likely to be a rocky and terrestrial planet. GJ 251c orbits a red dwarf star 18.2 light-years away in the Gemini constellation, which is not that far away in terms of space. “Cosmically speaking, it’s practically next door,” said study co-author astronomer Paul Robertson of the University of California, Irvine.
“While we can’t yet confirm the presence of an atmosphere or life on GJ 251c, the planet represents a promising target for future exploration,” said Mahadevan. “We made an exciting discovery, but there’s still much more to learn about this planet.”
Exoplanet GJ 251c may have an atmosphere capable of hosting some form of life
The discovery of GJ 251c is the result of two decades of observational data, the scientists explained in an article announcing the discovery. It was found using data from something the researchers helped design and construct, called the Habitable-Zone Planet Finder (HPF), a high-precision, near-infrared spectrograph — a complex prism that breaks apart signals from starlight — that was fixed to the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas.
“We call it the Habitable Zone Planet Finder, because we are looking for worlds that are at the right distance from their star that liquid water could exist on their surface. This has been the central goal of that survey,” Mahadevan said. “This discovery represents one of the best candidates in the search for atmospheric signature of life elsewhere in the next five to ten years.”
The full results of their study were published in The Astronomical Journal. The researchers now hope to utilize the next generation of telescopes to determine if GJ 251c has an atmosphere that contains the chemical signs of life.