In the search for life on other planets, a couple of promising leads have just opened up: Astronomers have identified two worlds with Earth-like masses, sitting in the habitable zone around a red dwarf star called GJ 1002.
The habitable zone around a star is the sweet spot between a planet being too hot or too cold to support life. To be in this zone, planets must be orbiting their star at a distance where, theoretically, there could be liquid water on their surface.
"GJ 1002 is a red dwarf star, with barely one-eighth the mass of the Sun," says astrophysicist Vera María Passenger from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in Spain. "It is quite a cool, faint star. This means that its habitability zone is very close to the star."
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