Breaking Discovery: Astronomers Unveil Earth-Sized Planet with Eternal Day-Night Cycle
A new planet the size of Earth has been discovered by
astronomers; it is only 55 light-years distant. It revolves around an
incredibly cool red dwarf star. Nature Astronomy publishes the discovery. The
planet is just the second of its sort to be found near this kind of star,
according to the multinational team of scientists.
A year on the star, SPECULOOS-3 b, is shorter than a single Earth day since it
takes the star about 17 hours to complete one orbit.
It is over two times colder than the sun. It is 100 times less light and ten times less massive, according to the astronomers. Days and nights on SPECULOOS-3 b are infinite, according to the discovery.
Lead author of the research and astronomer at the University
of Liège in Belgium Michaël Gillon stated, as quoted by phys.org, "We
think the planet rotates synchronously, such that the same side, dubbed the day
side, constantly faces the star, exactly like the moon does for the Earth.
However, the night side would be imprisoned in never-ending darkness."
Approximately 70% of all stars in our galaxy are ultra-cool red dwarf stars.
With a life expectancy of roughly 100 billion years, they are contenders to be
the last stars in the cosmos to shine.
Because they are so feeble and dispersed over the sky, it also becomes crucial for astronomers to keep an eye on them for several weeks in order to spot planets passing in front of them.
The discovery was made possible by the SPECULOOS project,
which is being led by the University of Liège in Belgium and involves the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Universities of Birmingham,
Cambridge, and Bern.
Using robotic telescopes stationed all over the world, SPECULOOS (Search for
Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) searches for possibly habitable exoplanets
near the tiniest and coolest stars in the solar neighbourhood.
According to Gillon, "We designed SPECULOOS
specifically to observe nearby ultracool dwarf stars in search of rocky planets
that lend themselves well to detailed studies."
"In 2017, the renowned TRAPPIST-1 system, comprising seven Earth-sized
planets, with several of them potentially habitable, was found by our SPECULOOS
prototype utilizing the TRAPPIST telescope. This was a great place to
start," he continued.