Scientists have recently discovered a super-Earth that is farther from its star than Saturn is from the Sun. And this is not an exceptional case. The Universe is full of planets larger than Earth, but smaller than the gas giants available in our system and they are in rather unexpected orbits.
A new super-Earth
A team of astronomers from Harvard and Smithsonian Universities reports the discovery of a new super-Earth. A planet larger than our home planet, but smaller than Uranus and Neptune. The most interesting thing is its orbit. This world is farther from its star than Saturn is from the Sun.
The planet was found thanks to data from Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet). The three instruments that make it up are located in Chile, South Africa and Australia. There they can observe the starry sky without disturbance or interruption.
Microlensing is a technique for detecting exoplanets that is based on the effect of their parent star’s light being bent by the gravity of these bodies. Detecting such an effect may be much more difficult than the wobble of a star in the rotation of a planet or the transit of the latter. However, scientists say this is the method best suited for detecting bodies farther away from stars than Earth.
Super-Earths in space
A new discovery is leading scientists to think more generally. The newly discovered planet does not resemble anything that is in the solar system and is also at a distance from the star where to meet something like Earth, but more massive, has so far been considered improbable. And it’s not alone.
For a long time, scientists built their theory about the origin of the planet on the example of the solar system. And they have them clearly distinguished into two groups: earth-like in the center and gas giants on the outside. And that’s where super-Earths come in, which occupy an intermediate position and also will be found not where expected.
Obviously, a new theory for the formation of worlds is needed, but it requires collecting more data and finally figuring out how many super-Earths there are in the cosmos. Because there’s an assumption that they’re actually as common as Neptune-like ones.
According to phys.org
