An exciting discovery has led NASA researchers to believe that there could be another habitable planet next to Earth. The exoplanet, called Kepler-1649c, is only slightly larger than our home planet and orbits at a nearby distance to its star.
Kepler-1649c is only around 1.06 times bigger than Earth and is quite close to its star that it receives around 75% of the light we do from the Sun. But the exoplanet's star is a red dwarf, known for its solar flares that make it difficult for life to evolve. It's so near to its star too, that a year is just 19.5 of our days. However, NASA believes there is water on the planet since its star generates less heat than the sun, which allows for the presence of water.
Interestingly, the exoplanet was discovered while scientists were reviewing data gathered by the Kepler space telescope, which has already retired two years ago. An algorithm designed to comb through the enormous amount of data collected by Kepler to identify potential planets failed to ID the Earth-sized planet previously. Luckily, researchers performed a review and noticed the existence of Kepler-1649c.
"This intriguing, distant world gives us even greater hope that a second Earth lies among the stars, waiting to be found," said NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen.
NASA will continue to study the exoplanet as there is still a lot yet to be uncovered, like what its atmosphere is made of. There could be any number of other problems with Kepler-1649c relative to its ability to support life, as well, including errors in the data used to determine that it is Earth-like and in the correct habitable zone around its star.
Among the thousands of exoplanets NASA has identified, however, Kepler-1649c has the biggest potential to support life because it is within the habitable zone and its size is closely similar to that of Earth.
Exoplanets with characteristics and features closely similar to our planet give scientists hope that there exist other planets capable of supporting life. They make good candidates for future studies by using observation tools based on Earth and in space.
We can't say for now that Kepler-1649c might support life and it will take many years before scientists can confirm that it's capable. But discoveries like these are always exciting and opens a lot of questions about life outside of Earth.
Kepler ran out of fuel and went to sleep in 2018, but scientists are still going through the observations it made during its historic hunt for planets beyond our own solar system.
