earth-like planets
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Potentially Habitable Earth-Sized Exoplanet Spotted In The Kepler Reject Pile
For years, a dedicated team of experts has manually sifted through troves of rejected Kepler data in hopes of finding something the computers had missed—an exercise that has resulted in the discovery of what is now arguably the most Earth-like planet known to astronomers.
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Hubble Observations Suggest Water May Be Abundant On Outer TRAPPIST-1 Planets
Image: ESO/N. Bartmann/spaceengine.org From the moment that seven Earth-sized planets were discovered in orbit around TRAPPIST-1 — an ultracool dwarf star located 39 light years away — astronomers have been busy trying to learn everything they can about this intriguing star system, particularly its potential to foster life. Recently, an international team of scientists used…
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Life In Red Dwarf Systems May Be Rarer Than We Thought
Red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the galaxy. But new research suggests that life within these systems may be limited, due to the stiflingly hot atmospheres on Earth-sized planets that orbit the red dwarfs.
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How Humanity’s Planet Hunters Will Find Earth 2.0
Twenty years ago, discovering another Earth sounded like a science fictional dream. But within a generation, astronomers now believe we might do just that.