A new planet the size of Earth discovered very close to us - this was announced by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Nasa at the winter conference of the American company, Tuesday, January 7, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The star, baptized "TOI 700 d" would be located 100 light years away.
At the origin of this discovery, the Tess satellite, designed in 2018 to find planets the size of Earth orbiting close stars. Except that Tess almost missed her first discovery. Several amateur astronomers, including a high school student by the name of Alton Spencer, praised by NASA, found an initial classification error, allowing us to understand the true nature of the system. The discovery was then confirmed by the Spitzer space telescope.
YOU 700 d, close to the size of the Earth
Tess first discovered the star TOI 700, which is small - about 40% the size and mass of our Sun - with a surface temperature less than half. Three planets are around this star, named TOI 700 b, c, and d. Only the last is in the so-called habitable zone. It is almost the size of the Earth (20% more), and circles its star in 37 days. In proportion, it receives 86% of the energy supplied by the Sun to the Earth.
It remains to be seen what it is made of. The researchers generated models based on the size and type of the star, in order to predict the composition of the atmosphere and the surface temperature.
One of the simulations, says NASA, is a planet covered by oceans with "a dense atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide, similar to what Mars looked like when it was young, according to scientists' assumptions". A face of this planet always faces its star, as is the case with the Moon with the Earth, a phenomenon called synchronous rotation. This face would be constantly covered with clouds, according to this model.
Another simulation predicts a version of the Earth without ocean, where the winds would blow from the hidden side towards the lit face.
Multiple astronomers will now observe the planet with other instruments, obtaining new data that may correspond to one of the models predicted by NASA.
With AFP
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