Remember KOI-7923.01? That was hot-shot planet was that was just discovered only two weeks ago and scientists declared that it was the best chance for supporting life as we know it here on Earth. The encouraging exo-planet is believed to be nearly identically the same size and orbit as Earth. Scientists stated that KOI-7923.
01 has a 395-day orbit and is 97% the size of Earth. It is a bit chillier than Earth since it is farther from its star, but still warm enough to support life and have liquid on the surface. Well, KOI-7923.01 is old and busted and kicked to the curb because Ross 128 b is the new hotness.A team of astronomers have discovered a new Earth-like exoplanet that is the second-closest temperate planet ever detected after Proxima b. The promising planet is ONLY 11 light years away! We’re talking about a mere 64,664,880,953,732 miles away! In terms of the entire universe that distance is nothing and only a hop, skip, and a jump away. For reference, the Earth is 238,900 miles away from the moon and 92.96 million miles away from the sun. Okay, so it doesn’t sound like we’re going to be checking out Ross 128 b for aliens any time soon, but the place certainly has potential for us to live there or for us to finally discover aliens.
Ross 128 b appears to have an atmosphere that could support life thanks to its slow rotation and weak magnetic activity. The exoplanet’s star is a red dwarf that burns about half as hot as our yellow dwarf sun. This means that Ross 128 b’s star doesn’t emit as much solar flare, but the exoplanet is 20 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun.
Meaning that our boy Ross 128 b receives roughly 38% more ultraviolet and X-ray radiation than Earth does, which could kill anything living. Since it is so close to its star, the new exoplanet features a climate that ranges between -76 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit. And you thought winter in New York sucked.Astronomers at the European Science Observatory (ESO) discovered Ross 128 b by using planet-hunting High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument in Chile. ESO revealed that Ross 128 b is 35% larger than Earth and orbits its star every 9.9 days. That’s one wicked quick year. On the bright side, if you were born on Ross 128 b you could be legally drinking alcohol in no time. But a 21-year-old Earthling would be 774-years-old on the super fast-orbiting Ross 128 B. Time flies when you’re completing an orbit every week and a half.
Scientists need to do more research on the prospective planet to see if it actually lies in the Goldilocks region and offers oxygen and liquids to potentially support life. They believe they won’t know if Ross 128 b is inhabitable for sure until at least 2024, when the new, more powerful Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will be functional at the Cerro Armazones Observatory in Chile. You guys really got creative on that telescope name.
Only five months ago, NASA’s Kepler space telescope made an incredible discovery of 219 exoplanets, including 10 that are Earth-like and could possibly support life. Two years ago, NASA found 1,284 new exoplanets, including nine that are potentially habitable. So we really are getting close to finding a new planet to flee to once we inevitably fuck this one up. Getting there is another issue.
[Fortune]
