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Two previously undiscovered Earth-like planets have been hiding in a solar system neighbouring ours, according to scientists.
Their sun, known as "Teegarden's star", is only 12.5 light years from us. It is also one of the smallest and dimmest known stars – making it, and the planets that it supports, very difficult to spot.
[Ed. addition follows.]
A search for this star on-line lead to this Wikipedia article which, in turn, lead to:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/uog-vot061819.php:
An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has discovered two new Earth-like planets near one of our closest neighboring stars. "Teegarden's star" is only about 12.5 light years away from Earth and is one of the smallest known stars. It is only about 2,700 °C warm and about ten times lighter than the Sun. Although it is so close to us, the star wasn't discovered until 2003. The scientists observed the star for about three years. The results were published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Their data clearly show the existence of two planets. "The two planets resemble the inner planets of our solar system," explains lead author Mathias Zechmeister of the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Göttingen. "They are only slightly heavier than Earth and are located in the so-called habitable zone, where water can be present in liquid form."
Journal Reference: Caballero, J. A.; Reiners, A.; Ribas, I.; Dreizler, S.; Zechmeister, M.; et al. (12 June 2019). "The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. Two temperate Earth-mass planet candidates around Teegarden's Star" (PDF). Astronomy & Astrophysics. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201935460
NB: Do not let the fact that Teegarden's star is only 12.5 light years from Earth and that some reports call that "near" give a false impression; we won't be visiting it any time soon!
Voyager 1 was launched over 41 years and 9 months ago and is now 145 AU (21.7 billion km; 13.5 billion mi) from Earth making it "the most distant from Earth of all known man-made objects."
According to the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Mission Info page, it is travelling at just under 17 km/sec (just over 38,000 mph). Further, note that it is just over 20 light-hours from Earth.
Let's make some very rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations. Voyager 1 needs to travel for 2 years to travel an additional light-hour from Earth. Yes, light-hour. It will take 8 more years' travel for it to finally be one light-day from Earth. So, it takes roughly 50 years' travel for each light-day's distance. Multiply that by 365 to get to a single light year away. Then multiply by another factor of 12.5 to reach the star... 50 x 365 x 12.5 givin us 228,125 years before Voyager 1 could travel the distance Teergarden's star is from Earth. That is a bit too long of a journey for a weekend getaway.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:30AM (1 child)
The calculations used to illustrate how long it might take to get there are interesting, but only tell part of the story.
The various other properties of the star make the planets "earth-like" only in a very loose sort of way. The star has a mass of 0.08 times that of the Sun (from the Wikipedia article) and could almost be classified a brown dwarf.
Any earth-like planets orbiting that within it's goldilocks zone is going to be very, very close, so tidally locked. I think this means that they are not likely to have a magnetic field, which will reduce the chances they have any sort of atmosphere.
All that could be completely wrong of course.
I propose we send someone to have a look.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:14PM
From a distance, Mars is also Earth like. Pity everything about it is toxic to life.