Astronomers discover exoplanet promising for the search for life

Scientists have recently discovered the exoplanet HD 20794 d. It is the third to be discovered close to a yellow star similar to the Sun. Scientists say it can be observed quite easily with a spectrograph. Therefore, it is the best candidate for testing hypotheses about the origin of life in the Universe.

Why Earth has life while other planets don’t. Source: phys.org

New Planet

Scientists continue to discover more and more exoplanets. Now they are known to more than 7,000, but the main question about them remains unsolved. Scientists have not been able to answer the question of whether there is life on any of them. However, they have recently come up with a good candidate for solving this problem.

HD 20794 d is the third planet discovered in the system, which is located 19.7 light-years away from us. It was found by an international team that included scientists from the University of Geneva and the NCCR PlanetS project. An article about this study appeared in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The discovered exoplanet orbits a yellow star very similar to our Sun. It is located at a distance of 19.5 light years from us. According to scientists, this makes it very easy to observe the planet, including with the help of a spectrograph, which makes it possible to determine the chemical composition of its atmosphere, and thus find undeniable signs of life.

Orbit of a planet

Particularly interesting in studying HD 20794 d is its orbit. The life zone of the yellow star around which it orbits extends from 0.7 to 1.5 a.u. away. The planet makes one orbit in 647 days, which is 40 days faster than Mars. At the same time, its orbit is even more different from the circle than its one.

At the apocenter, HD 20794 d is at a distance of 2 a.u. from its luminosity, i.e., outside the life zone. At the same time, this distance is 0.7 a.u. at the pericenter. At this point, the celestial body is close to its inner boundary. That is, being formally livable, it actually oscillates between two extremes: incredible heat and incredible cold.

In fact, the presence of the ocean and atmosphere can greatly equalize all the fluctuations. However, whether this is really the case and how all this together affects the emergence and development of the biosphere can only be told by more detailed studies. 

According to phys.org

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