Gabriel Pérez (IAC)
Planet HD 20794 D has a habitable zone, although it does not necessarily contain water. It is considered a “surplus”.
An international team of astrophysicists, including Portuguesehe discovered a planet outside the solar system at a distance from his star that makes him theoretically able to host life as he knows.
The discovery of the planet HD 20794 d, Described in this Tuesday published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, “represents a significant advance in the search for life in the universe and is an excellent laboratory that will allow the team to model and test new hypotheses in the search for life in the universe,” he says in Communicated the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, which participated in work with several researchers.
The planet in question is considered a “superstar” because it has a larger mass than the mass of the earth, and “crosses the habitable zone” of the star HD 20794, “a sun similar to the 20 light-year-olds.”
The habitable zone of a star is the region where “temperatures are sufficiently mild so that water may exist in the surface of a rock planet.” THE liquid water It is an essential condition for life as it is known.
Despite the promising discovery, the statement points out that the fact that a planet is in the star of the star “is not, in itself, a guarantee that there is liquid water”, noting that Mars “It’s in the habitable zone of the sun”Although there are no proofs that the planet can host life.
The astrophysicist team detected the planet HD 20794 D after analyzing data obtained from Radial speed measurements of the hostel star made for about 20 years with two concealed concea in two telescopes of the Southern European Observatory in Chile.
Both instruments “manage to measure tiny variations in the speed of the stars, caused by the gravitational attraction of the planets over their mother star,” explains the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences.
