Astronomers announced on Wednesday that they have found a new possibly habitable “super Earth” located only 31 light years from our own solar system. The planet has been deemed GJ 357 d is six times larger than earth, however, it orbits a small dwarf sun GJ 357 and only takes 55.7 days to complete a full cycle. Regardless, astronomers believe that it is still “possibly habitable.”
Lisa Kaltenegger, the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell and associate professor in astronomy, details that, “with a thick atmosphere, the planet GJ 357 d could maintain liquid water on its surface like Earth, and we could pick out signs of life with telescopes that will soon be online.”
She continues to explain that if signs of life are discovered on the planet that “it would be at the top of everyone’s travel list – and we could answer a 1,000-year-old question on whether we are alone in the cosmos.”
The methodology behind finding the planet was through using TESS, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, a piece of equipment designed for discovering planets. This satellite monitors the brightest stars in the sky looking for periodic dips in light, called transits, and tend to be signs of an orbiting planet.
Another nearby planet GJ 357 b was first discovered by Rafael Luque of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) on Tenerife and was classified as a “hot earth” orbiting the same sun.
The pair telescopes Kaltenegger mentions should be online by 2021 and 2025, and will be able to discern the topography of the planet like whether it is rocky or has oceans. When speaking with NBC News, Kaltenegger says, “this is definitely going to be one of the best targets for these telescopes because it’s so close and so bright.”
As for what can be discovered by the new telescopes, she says that “we can collect that light and analyze it further to see the chemical composition of the atmosphere, or if we see signs of liquid water or oxygen.”
