A team of astronomers has proposed using the James Webb Space Telescope to peer at five planets that exist in the so-called "Venus Zone".

This zone was first proposed by the University of California, Riverside (UCR) astrophysicist Stephen Kane in 2014 and it describes the region around a star where a planet it too hot to feature liquid water but not so hot that it no longer has an atmosphere.

The new observations could shed new light on the evolution of our planetary neighbor Venus. It could also tell us a great deal about the evolution of potentially habitable verdant planets into fiery hellscapes.

Some scientists believe that Venus may have once been habitable before it became the fiery planet — known as Earth's evil twin — that it is today.

In fact, the researchers behind the new James Webb proposal believe that the detection of gases such as methane or nitrous oxide in Venus-like exoplanets could indicate that life exists on those planets.

To read more, click here.