An exoplanet in the habitable zone of its own sun is now suspected to have a liquid ocean and an atmosphere, meaning it has potential to harbor life similar to that on Earth.
The planet, named LHS 1140 b, is about 1.7 times the size of Earth and is situated around 48 light-years away, outside our solar system.
This distant world, first discovered in 2017, has now been found to be a rocky world like ours but with 10 to 20 percent of its mass being made up by water, according to a new paper due to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters this week (currently available on the arXiv preprint server).
"Of all currently known temperate exoplanets, LHS 1140 b could well be our best bet to one day indirectly confirm liquid water on the surface of an alien world beyond our solar system," paper co-author Charles Cadieux, a doctoral student at Université de Montréal, said in a statement. "This would be a major milestone in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets."
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