New planet that could support human life discovered 'close' to Earth: Tech & Science Daily podcast

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UK scientists have discovered a new planet that could potentially support human life and it’s considered to be ‘close to Earth’ .

Gliese 12 b is just 40 light-years away and orbits its host star every 12.8 days.

It’s a similar size to Venus and has an estimated surface temperature of 42C, which is cooler than most of the 5,000 planets outside of the solar system that have been confirmed so far.

Tech & Science Daily hear from Dr Richie Howard, Curator of Fossil Arthropods at the Natural History museum and lead author of a study about a prehistoric ‘Dune like’ worm.

It was a predator that hunted around 200 million years before the dinosaurs - and it is being compared to the iconic creatures from the films.

The fossil worm had been in the Museum’s collections since it was found on a disused Victorian quarry site in Herefordshire in the 1920s, but scientists hadn’t been able to properly analyse the discovery until now.

Experts are predicting that the North Atlantic is set for an ‘extreme’ hurricane season.

The US weather agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says as many as 13 Atlantic hurricanes of category one or above are forecast between June to November.

They also say there could be as many as seven major hurricanes of category three strength or over this year - which would be more than double the usual number in a season.

And the rest

Scientists successfully use drones to validate walrus counts alongside satellite images from space, and people with commonly autocorrected names fight back.

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