Astronomers Just Found A Potentially Habitable Earth-Sized Planet, And It's Nearby - SlashGear

Astronomers recently discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet located just 31 light-years from Earth which may even be potentially habitable.

"When we analyzed the data of the star Wolf 1069, we discovered a clear, low-amplitude signal of what appears to be a planet of roughly Earth mass," said the lead researcher of the paper in Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, Diana Kossakowski of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy(MPIA).

The traditional view of whether a planet counts as habitable is based on the probability water could be present in liquid form on its surface.

That's why even though Earth is the only planet within the habitable zone in our solar system, researchers think that places like Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede, and Enceladus could potentially be livable too (via the European Space Agency).

If it had an Earth-like atmosphere, the greenhouse effect could raise its temperature to 13° C, meaning there could be liquid water on the side of the planet facing its star.

To learn more about this planet, the researchers need to use new tools like the upcoming Extremely Large Telescope, which will be able to study it in greater detail — and they estimate it will take around ten years before this is possible.