Latest news with #Kepler725c


Sustainability Times
16-06-2025
- Science
- Sustainability Times
'Super-Earth Could Host Life': Stunning New Planet Found in Habitable Zone Ignites Hopes of a Second Earth Beyond Our Solar System
IN A NUTSHELL 🌍 Kepler-725c is a newly discovered super-Earth located 2,475 light-years from Earth. is a newly discovered super-Earth located 2,475 light-years from Earth. 🛰️ The planet resides in the habitable zone of its star, making it a candidate for supporting life. of its star, making it a candidate for supporting life. 🔭 Its elliptical orbit means it is only partially within the habitable zone, affecting climate conditions. means it is only partially within the habitable zone, affecting climate conditions. 🚀 The discovery was made using the transit method, highlighting innovative techniques in exoplanet research. In the vast expanse of space, the discovery of new planets always holds a special allure. Recently, astronomers have uncovered a fascinating find—a super-Earth that resides in the habitable zone of its star. This exoplanet, named Kepler-725c, is intriguing not only because of its potential to harbor life but also due to its unique orbital characteristics. Situated 2,475 light-years from Earth, Kepler-725c challenges our understanding of what makes a planet habitable. This discovery raises significant questions about the conditions necessary for life and the possibilities that lie beyond our solar system. What Makes a Planet Habitable? The concept of habitability revolves around the potential for a planet to support life, which hinges on a complex web of factors including its relationship with its star and other celestial bodies. The standard definition of a habitable planet is one that can sustain life for an extended period. For life as we know it, this requires the presence of liquid water, a source of energy, and essential nutrients. The habitable zone of a star—the region where a planet can maintain liquid water on its surface due to ideal heat levels—is crucial in this context. Astronomers have long sought planets within these zones, driven by the hope of discovering life beyond Earth. Kepler-725c, a super-Earth detected by researchers at the Yunnan Astronomical Observatory in China, fits this bill, orbiting a sun-like star. Although it is ten times more massive than Earth, it is classified as a low-mass exoplanet, highlighting the diversity and potential of celestial bodies in habitability studies. 'It's Huge, and It's Been Hidden for This Whole Time': Astronomers Staggered by Discovery of Eos, a Giant Glowing Cloud in Space An Intriguing Exoplanet Kepler-725c is particularly remarkable due to its highly elliptical orbit, boasting an eccentricity of 0.44 compared to Earth's near-circular 0.0167. This means that Kepler-725c comes significantly closer to its star at certain points in its orbit and much farther at others. This unique trajectory results in the planet spending only part of its orbit within the star's habitable zone. Despite receiving an average of 1.4 times more heat from its star than Earth does from the Sun, this balance is an average over its entire orbit. Should Kepler-725c possess an atmosphere, the varying heat levels throughout its orbit could significantly affect its climate. This raises the question of whether the planet is only habitable for portions of its 207.5-day year. Moreover, Kepler-725c's positioning—being the sole known low-mass planet within a habitable zone and not orbiting a gas giant—adds layers of intrigue, prompting further inquiries into planetary formation and evolution in such unique configurations. 'Doomsday Coming Sooner Than You Think': This Groundbreaking Study Reveals the Imminent Threat Facing Humanity and Why We Need to Act Now The Discovery Method The method used to discover Kepler-725c is as compelling as the exoplanet itself. Researchers employed the transit method, searching for slight dimming in a star's brightness as a planet passes in front of it. This innovative approach offers new avenues for identifying potentially habitable planets that traditional methods might overlook, especially those orbiting sun-like stars or Earth-sized planets with the potential to host liquid water. The transit method's success in finding Kepler-725c underscores its potential in the ongoing search for habitable worlds. This technique not only broadens the scope of known exoplanets but also enhances our ability to identify planets that may share key characteristics with Earth, such as size and distance from their respective stars. 'James Webb Spots Cosmic Shock': This Newly Found Ancient Structure Challenges Everything We Knew About the Early Universe Future Implications of the Discovery The discovery of Kepler-725c opens up numerous possibilities for future research and exploration. It challenges existing notions of habitability and urges astronomers to consider new parameters and models. As technology advances, more sophisticated tools will allow scientists to study such planets in greater detail, potentially revealing atmospheres, climates, and even signs of life. The findings from Kepler-725c could inspire missions focused on exploring its unique environment and studying its star system. Such endeavors would not only expand our understanding of the universe but also fuel our imagination about the potential for life beyond our solar system. The revelation of Kepler-725c as a super-Earth in a habitable zone is a testament to the progress being made in the field of astronomy. It invites us to ponder the fundamental questions about life in the universe and our place within it. As scientists continue to explore, could this exoplanet be the key to unlocking the secrets of life beyond Earth? Our author used artificial intelligence to enhance this article. Did you like it? 4.2/5 (20)


Daily Mail
04-06-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Is THIS where aliens are hiding? Scientists discover a 'Super-Earth' planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star
Whether or not Earthlings are alone in the universe is a matter that has occupied the greatest of minds for centuries. Now, a sensational discovery by Chinese scientists offers a promising clue that extraterrestrial life does in fact exist. The astronomers have found a 'super-Earth' planet around 2,400 light years away where biological life could feasibly thrive. Called Kepler-725c, the faraway world has 10 times the mass of Earth, according to the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Excitingly, it's located in the 'habitable zone' – a distance from its star where it is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist. It likely has liquid water on its surface, which hints at the possibility of carbon-based life similar to that on Earth. Just like Earth, Kepler-725c is thought to be a rocky planet, possibly covered by a water ocean and exposed land. 'Kepler-725 c might equally be a volatile-dominated water world,' the experts report in a new paper. Kepler-725c completes one orbit of its star every 207.5 days, meaning a year there is shorter than a year on Earth. Due to differences in its axis compared with our planet, the planet receives roughly 1.4 times the solar radiation that Earth does. But this does not make Kepler-725c too hot to rule out the possibility of life existing on its surface, according to the researchers. It's been described as a 'super Earth' because it has a mass that's higher than our home planet but lower than ice giants Uranus and Neptune. It also travels in an eccentric orbit – a non-circular orbit where the distance between the orbiting body and the central body varies significantly. The star, called Kepler-725, is significantly younger than our sun – only 1.6 billion years old, compared with our sun which is 4.6 billion years old. Also in the same star system is Kepler-725b, a gas giant planet with a much shorter (39.64-day) orbit of the star. As its name indicates, astronomers originally discovered the star system with the Kepler space telescope, a pioneering planet-hunting mission that launched in 2009. It spent nearly a decade in space looking for Earth-size planets orbiting other stars before being decommissioned in 2018. For their study, the researchers used data from NASA's Kepler telescope, which would capture information about exoplanets while moving in front of their host stars 0 known as 'transiting'. This is an artist impression of the Kepler Space Telescope that was decommissioned by NASA in 2018 after nearly a decade of service The Transit Timing Variation method Transit Timing Variation (TTV) is a planet-detecting method that observes irregularities in predicted transit times of an already-known transiting planet. Most exoplanets have been discovered by watching them transit (cross in front of) their stars. So although we can't see the planet itself, we can see the dip in brightness of the star as the planet blocks some of it from Earth's view. We expect transiting planets to go around like clockwork, always taking exactly the same length of time to complete an orbit. But for many transiting planets, that's not true; the transit happens slightly too early or too late compared to the prediction. This is an indication that there's an unseen planet also present in the system and tugging gravitationally on the transiting planet. Source: The Planetary Society Most 'exoplanets' (planets outside our solar system) are found by measuring the dimming of a star that happens when the planet passes in front of it, called the transit method. Another method called radial velocity, also known as the wobble or Doppler method, can detect 'wobbles' in a star caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet. But the researchers made the discovery of this 'super-Earth' using a clever method called Transit Timing Variation (TTV), based on measurements from the Kepler space telescope. TVV observes slight irregularities in the predicted transit times of an already-known transiting planet (in this case, Kepler-725b). TTV is particularly well-suited for detecting small, long-orbital-period planets that are otherwise difficult to discover using the other two methods, the researchers say. By analysing the TTV signals of Kepler-725b, a gas giant planet with a 39.64-day orbit in the same system, the team could infer information about Kepler-725c, including its mass and orbit. Kepler-725c may belong to a new class of habitable super-Earths (alternatively known as 'mini-Neptunes') known as Hycean planets. It has been proposed that Hycean planets, with massive oceans and hydrogen-rich atmospheres, could allow a 'significantly wider discovery space in the search for potentially habitable planets', the team say. Researchers achieved a breakthrough by using the Transit Timing Variation (TTV) technique for the first time to discover a super-Earth Their research, published in Nature Astronomy, marks the first time a planet in the habitable zone of a solar-type star has been discovered using the TVV method. 'This discovery demonstrates that the transit timing variation method enables the detection and accurate mass measurement of a super-Earth/mini-Neptune within a solar-like star's habitable zone,' they add. In 1995, the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star opened the door to exploring the profound mystery of if other life exists. Thirty years later, the existence of extraterrestrial life is still yet to be confirmed, although recently scientists gave a tantalizing update about another planet, K2-18b. K2-18b has large quantities of chemicals in its atmosphere that are suggestive of living organisms. What have scientists found at Planet K2-18b? Investigations into planet K2-18b are being led by Dr Nikku Madhusudhan, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, who called it a 'hycean' world – a rocky planet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and oceans of water. Planet K2-18b – more than eight times the mass of Earth and over twice as big – was discovered 10 years ago, but it was only in 2019 that the presence of water vapour in K2-18b's atmosphere was reported. Then, in 2023, the James Webb telescope detected carbon dioxide and methane in its atmosphere, as well as a shortage of ammonia – a 'very profound' finding because it indicates there's a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. Arguably even more exciting, however, is the discovery of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) in the planet's atmosphere. On Earth, DMS and DMDS are only produced by life, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton – suggesting a similar form of life on the distant planet. In fact, scientists have been unable to think of any natural geological or chemical process that could create DMS without living organisms. What's more, concentrations of DMS and DMDS in K2-18b's atmosphere are estimated to be thousands of times stronger – more than 10 parts per million by volume compared with one part per billion on Earth – conjuring a scenario of an ocean world teeming with life. However, the team 'remain cautious' and want to obtain more data before officially announcing that life has been found on another world. The observations have reached the 'three-sigma' level of statistical significance – meaning there is a 0.3 per cent probability that they occurred by chance. To reach the accepted classification for scientific discovery, the observations would have to cross the five-sigma threshold, meaning there would be below a 0.00006 per cent probability they occurred by chance.