It’s not as far as we thought
An Earth-like planet which could have the facilities to support human life could be closer than we thought.
The planet named ‘Wolf 1069 b’ is said to be 31 light-years away, which when put into space context, is the equivalent of heading to the Tesco express round the corner from your house.
There’s plenty of features on this recently-discovered planet to suggest that human life could be on there, and the sixth-closest possible Earth-like planet which has so far been found by exoplanet hunters. Exoplanets are planets which orbits stars outside our solar system.
Scientists also believe that the planet sits within the habitable zone of its solar system, meaning it’s in an area where water can exist in liquid form.
Wolf 1069 b is also considerably closer to the sun than planet Earth itself and it’s orbit around the sun lasts just 15 days, meaning it is even closer to the sun than Mercury is.
The planet was spotted during a long-term study in which they are looking for exoplanets across the universe known as CARMENES as part of a method called ‘radial velocity method’.
This method assesses to see if there is a ‘wobble’ in a star which therefore indicates that it may be as the result of a gravitational field of a planet.
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