An international team discovered an Earth-sized planet orbiting a long-lived red dwarf, providing unique insights into potentially habitable worlds. Credit: SciTechDaily.com. This planet, tidally locked and likely lacking an atmosphere due to intense radiation, offers new insights into long-lived red dwarfs, which are anticipated to be among the last stars burning in the universe.
An international team using robotic telescopes around the world recently spotted an Earth-sized planet orbiting an ultra-cool red dwarf, the dimmest and longest-lived of stars. When the universe grows cold and dark, these will be the last stars burning.SPECULOOS-3 b is about 55 light-years from Earth and nearly the same size. A year there, one orbit around the star, takes about 17 hours.
‘‘We designed SPECULOOS specifically to explore nearby ultra-cool dwarf stars in search of rocky planets,’’ Gillon said. ‘‘With the SPECULOOS prototype and the crucial help of theSpitzer Space Telescope, we discovered the famous TRAPPIST-1 system. That was an excellent start!’’. The project is a true international endeavor, with partnership with the Universities of Cambridge, Birmingham, Bern, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and ETH Zürich.
Seeing the star, let alone the planet, is a feat in itself. “Though this particular red dwarf is more than a thousand times dimmer than the Sun, its planet orbits much, much closer than the Earth, heating up the planetary surface,” said co-author Catherine Clark, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.The planet receives almost 16 times more energy per second than Earth receives from the Sun.
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