The planet lies about 48.6 light years from Earth and is one of more than 4 000 so-called exoplanets identified over the past two decades circling distant stars in our home galaxy, the MilkyWay.
The study will likely add to a debate among astronomers about whether the search for life-sustaining conditions beyond our solar system should focus on exoplanets around red dwarfs, accounting for 75% of all stars in the Milky Way, or less common, larger, hotter stars more like our own sun. “The temperature contrast on this planet is about as big as it can possibly be,” said researcher Laura Kreidberg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is lead author of the study.
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