healthmedicinet

Daily News and Tips

Potentially habitable exoplanets found

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Jeffrey Daniels

Update From The Cosmic Realm

Potentially habitable exoplanets found that we can visit within a single human lifetime.

Two potentially habitable exoplanets are found and published this month. They have been designated Kapteyn b and Gliese 832 c. Both orbit red dwarf stars, they have the same general layout with a super-earth inside the Habitable Zone and a larger planet orbiting further out. Ignoring the yet-to-be-confirmed Tau Ceti e (at 12 lightyears away), these two systems are the closest to Earth so far found.

Kapteyn b orbits a red dwarf called Kapteyn’s Star, named after the astronomer who discovered the star itself.  The star is 11 billion years old, making Kapteyn b one of the oldest planets known to astronomy and likely the oldest potentially habitable one yet known.

Kapteyn’s star is also only 13 lightyears away from Earth, which on the stellar scale is practically right next door to us.

Kapteyn b compared to Earth: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other, Gliese 832 c, orbits the red dwarf Gliese 832 situated a mere 16 lightyears away from us.

Gliese 832 c compared to Earth:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since both worlds orbit red dwarf stars, it is likely that they won’t look the way they do in the images above, but rather like some large, odd-looking eyeball with its perpetual hurricane at one end and permanent ice cap on the other.

The fact that both are so relatively close to us is awesome. It means we stand a chance of exploring those worlds within a single human lifetime – provided we use a starship that’s fast enough.  Using a ship that traveles half the speed of light makes the trip to Kapteyn b only 26 years, and Gliese 832 c 32 years. We may even be able to bring them back to Earth again before their lives were through.

References

First photo: Flickr, Thang Nguyen
Second photo from PHL
Third photo from PHL

Anglada-Escude, G., Arriagada, P., Tuomi, M., Zechmeister, M., Jenkins, J., Ofir, A., Dreizler, S., Gerlach, E., Marvin, C., Reiners, A., Jeffers, S., Butler, R., Vogt, S., Amado, P., Rodriguez-Lopez, C., Berdinas, Z., Morin, J., Crane, J., Shectman, S., Thompson, I., Diaz, M., Rivera, E., Sarmiento, L., Jones, H. (2014). Two planets around Kapteyn’s star: a cold and a temperate super-Earth orbiting the nearest halo red dwarf Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 443 (1) DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slu076

GJ 832c: A super-earth in the habitable zone

Kapteyn b, Gliese 832 c, speed of light, exoplanets, stars, Tau Ceti e, Earth

Related Posts

  • 715 New Worlds Added To Kepler’s Belt
  • The Sudden Rise to Importance of Gliese 667
  • Pic of the Day: A Red Dwarf and Its Exoplanets
  • Video: The 2012 Heliophysics Fleet
  • What Makes Our Solar System Stand Out
  • Pic of the Day: Massive Cluster Galaxy Forms Stars in Record Time
  • Video of the Day: Earth at Night

(No Ratings Yet)

TAGS: earth, exoplanets, Gliese 832 c, Kapteyn b, speed of light, stars, Tau Ceti e

!–

–