WATCH: NASA discovers Earth-sized, habitable planet in other solar system
Julia Johnson
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NASA has discovered an Earth-sized planet that is considered “habitable.”
On Tuesday, at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, it presented the finding.
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According to postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California Emily Gilbert, “This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of.”
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“That makes the TOI 700 system an exciting prospect for additional follow up. Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so the system also shows how additional TESS observations help us find smaller and smaller worlds,” she explained.
The newly discovered planet is labeled TOI 700 e. TOI 700 b, c, and d have previously been spotted by NASA. D, like its newly discovered counterpart, is considered to orbit a “habitable zone.”
Known as TOI 700, the system stems from a small, cool, red dwarf star sequence. Red dwarfs are small compared to the Sun. In fact, they’re considered the smallest main sequence of stars, per NASA.
NASA defines a habitable zone as being in “the range of distances from a star where liquid surface water could be present at some point in a planet’s history.”
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Scientists expect more details to be revealed about this system in the future.