Located In The Habitable Zone .. NASA Discovers A Rocky Exoplanet Similar To Earth
When it comes to finding life outside our solar system, Earth-like planets seem like a good place to start. A good example of this is a new celestial body called TOI 700 e, which may lead to promising results.
Scientists have confirmed that the planet TOI 700 e orbits within the habitable zone of its star, called TOI 700. This region of space allows large amounts of water to exist on its surface at a suitable temperature, so that the water remains in a liquid state.
These types of planets are well suited to life as we know it. It has a suitable temperature that allows only a light layer of ice to form and at the same time allows water vapor to condense.
The discovery is credited to NASA's Specialized Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. He is the one who discovered this planet, and gave it its name (TOI means TESS Object of Interest). It is the second planet in the system's habitable zone, in addition to TOI 700 d, which was observed in 2020.
"This is just one of the few habitable, multiple-planet systems that we know of," says planetary scientist Emily Gilbert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
Gilbert continues: “This is what makes the TOI 700 system an exciting opportunity that deserves further investigation. Planet e is about 90% the size of planet d, so additional observations from TESS will help us find smaller, smaller worlds.”
TOI 700 is a small, cool star (known as an M dwarf star), located about 100 light-years away, in the Dorado constellation.
These stars are not near our sun, or anywhere near it, so the planets must be closer for conditions to be warm enough for water to freeze.
As for the planet TOI 700 e, it is believed to be 95% of the Earth's mass, and is made of rock. It is located in the "Ultimate Zone" habitable zone, an area where water may have existed at one time.
Planet TOI 700 d is located in the narrow habitable zone (the "conservative zone"), where astronomers believe liquid water may be abundant on most extant planets.
Telescopes see these exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) as regular flashes of light from their parent stars as they pass in front of them, in what is known as a transit.
And with so much surface blocking the star's light, there's a greater chance of seeing large planets than small ones, making these discoveries of Earth-like planets rare and important.
TOI 700 e takes about 28 days to make one orbit, while TOI 700 d, which is a little farther away, takes about 37 days. Since TOI 700 e is smaller than TOI 700 d, it took more data to confirm that this shadow in the image really represents a new planet.
“If the star were a little closer, or the planet a little bigger, we might have located TOI 700 e in the first year of the TESS data,” says astrophysicist Ben Hurd of the University of Maryland. But the signal was so weak that we needed an extra year of observing the transit to determine it.”
The TESS satellite monitors about 100 million stars, so any way we can find to narrow the search for life will be helpful. Finding exoplanets in their habitable zones is one of the best ways to do this.
TOI 700 e and TOI 700 d are both thought to be locked onto their star, in other words one side of the planet is always facing its star, in the same way that the same side of the Moon is always visible from Earth. It is recognized that having one side of a planet constantly exposed to sunlight makes it less likely that complex life will start smoothly.
Even if these perfectly fit planets aren't absolutely ideal for life, they do tell us a thing or two about finding solar systems that might be better suited to life.
By studying star systems like ours, astronomers can also better understand the evolution of this system and how neighboring planets reached their current orbits.
"Even with more than 5,000 exoplanets discovered so far, TOI 700 e is prime evidence that we have a lot to learn," says astronomer Joy Rodriguez of Michigan State University.
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