A “super-Earth” planet found outside of our solar system could have conditions suitable for life, according to experts at the University of Oxford.
Researchers said the planet has a mass six times greater than our Earth’s and orbits in a “habitable zone” of a star similar to the sun.
While located 20 light-years away, scientists believe the planet – named HD 20794 d – could be at the right distance from its star to sustain water on its surface.
Dr Michael Cretignier, postdoctoral research assistant at the university’s physics department, said: “Excitingly, its proximity with us means there is hope for future space missions to obtain an image of it.”
However, because HD 20794 d orbits in an elliptical way, rather than circular like the Earth, it is unclear whether it would be able to host life.
It was first identified by Dr Cretignier in 2022 after he found a possible signal while analysing archived data recorded by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher spectrograph at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
An international team of researchers then analysed two decades of observations to confirm the discovery of HD 20794 d.
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“For me, it was naturally a huge joy when we could confirm the planet’s existence,” Dr Cretignier said.
“It was also a relief, since the original signal was at the edge of the spectrograph’s detection limit, so it was hard to be completely convinced at that time if the signal was real or not.”
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He added the planet “could play a pivotal role in future missions” hoping to “search for biosignatures indicating potential life” on planets far away from our own.
“I’m now very enthusiastic to hear what other scientists can tell us about this newly discovered planet, particularly since it is among the closest Earth-analogues we know about and given its peculiar orbit,” he said.
The findings were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
