New 'super-Earth' planet discovered by scientists that could support life

Planet Earth from space.
-Credit:Getty Images/iStockphoto


Leading scientists have made an exciting discovery in the depths of space that has been hailed as "invaluable" in the search for signs of life outside our solar system.

A planet has been discovered with a mass six times greater than that of the Earth, the University of Oxford announced on Tuesday, January 28. Not only that, but it has been found to be in orbit of a nearby star similar to our own sun, within the distance described by scientists as the "habitable zone" to have water on its surface.

The exoplanet - the term given to planets outside our solar system - has been named HD 20794 d, and is just 20 light-years away from Earth. This opens up the exciting possibility for future space missions to travel there and capture images of it, the international team behind the discovery explained.

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Because the distance of the planet from its star changes over the course of its orbit, which is elliptical rather than circular, it is too early to say whether it is definitely capable of supporting life. But Dr Michael Cretignier, one of the scientists behind the discovery, said it could play a "pivotal role" in ongoing missions looking for life on other planets.

Dr Cretignier, a postdoctoral research assistant in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, first identified a possible signal for the exoplanet in 2022 while analysing archived data recorded by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher spectrograph at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. An international team of researchers went on to analyse two decades of observations to confirm the discovery.

Describing the discovery of the planet as a "huge joy", Dr Cretignier added: "With its location in a habitable zone and relatively close proximity to Earth, this planet could play a pivotal role in future missions that will characterise the atmospheres of exoplanets to search for biosignatures indicating potential life.

"While my job mainly consists of finding these unknown worlds, I'm now very enthusiastic to hear what other scientists can tell us about this newly discovered planet, particularly since it is among the closest Earth-analogues we know about and given its peculiar orbit," he said.