14 DAY TRIAL // In a new paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society researchers announce the discovery of two planets that were previously unknown to the scientific community and that orbit a star not far from our Sun.
The international team of scientists behind this announcement details that the star that these two newly discovered planets like to dance and prance around is dubbed Kapteyn's Star and sits just 13 light-years away from Earth.
The star is believed to have formed about 11.5 billion years ago in a dwarf galaxy and to have become part and parcel of our Milky Way when the latter disrupted and gobbled up its dwarf galaxy mom.
According to EurekAlert, the two planets that have just recently been found to orbit Kapteyn's Star could be about as old as the star itself. If this is indeed the case, this means they are 2.5 times older than Earth.
As detailed in the paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the two planets are now referred to as Kapteyn b and Kapteyn c, and researchers say they are quite different to one another size-wise.
Thus, Kapteyn b is estimated to have a mass about five times greater than that of our planet, and evidence indicates that it orbits Kapteyn's Star in just 48 days. Kapteyn c, on the other hand, is larger and its year lasts a total of 121 days.
Based on its distance to Kapteyn's Star, astronomers have concluded that Kapteyn b might be warm enough to accommodate for liquid water on its surface. This means that, all things considered, it could also be able to support life.
By comparison, Kapteyn c is said to sit too far from the star it orbits for its surface to house liquid water. Consequently, scientists doubt that it has ever or may ever have what it takes to accommodate for even the simplest life forms.
Regardless of whether or not either of these two planets could be ripe for life, specialists say that their discovery is a major step forward when it comes to pinning down potentially habitable worlds in the proximity of our good old Earth.
“This discovery is very exciting. It suggests that many potentially habitable worlds will be found in the next years around nearby stars by ground-based and space-based observatories, such as PLATO,” says Professor Richard Nelson, Head of the Astronomy Unit at the Queen Mary University of London.