USA TODAY International Edition
New Earth- like planet found — except it’s 500 degrees
Scientists have spotted a new planet that’s a dead ringer for our own and resides just around the cosmic corner from our part of the galaxy.
The planet’s proximity and uncanny resemblance to Earth make it “arguably the most important planet ever found outside the solar system,” the University of Maryland’s Drake Deming wrote in a commentary accompanying the scientific report about the discovery.
Dubbed GJ 1132b, it is slightly wider and more massive than Earth. Its composition is similar to Earth’s, and it lies only 39 light- years, or 230 trillion miles, away, which isn’t very far compared to the unfathomable spread of the universe. Other Earth- size planets are more than three times as distant as this one.
If planets outside the solar system, also known as exoplanets, were houses, this one “is not the house right next to yours,” said Boston University astronomer Philip Muirhead, who wasn’t involved in the study. “But it’s on the other side of the block.”
And if planet GJ 1132b were a house, it would almost certainly be vacant. The coolest part of its atmosphere measures a scorching 450 to 500 degrees, akin to “the hottest temperature your oven will go,” said study author Zachory Berta- Thompson of MIT.
But it’s not too toasty to have an atmosphere. GJ 1132b may have a wrapper of the same gases that swaddle the Earth, Berta-Thompson and his colleagues wrote in this week’s Nature.
That possibility has scientists rubbing their hands in anticipation over what they could learn from this world, discovered with a network of small telescopes known as MEarth- South. GJ 1132b is close enough for the Hubble Space Telescope and its successor to have a good look at its atmosphere.