There are mysterious "super-Earths" all over the galaxy [View all]
"They are indeed very exciting planets."
By Mark Kaufman on January 14, 2023
An artist's conception of the "super-Earth" Kepler-22b. Credit: NASA / JPL
Our solar system is peculiar.
Yes, there are strange worlds out there: moons harboring oceans, a desert orb that once teemed with water, and, of course, a planet brimming with strange, tentacled life. Yet our cosmic neighborhood is also unusual for what it doesn't have.
It's a golden age in the discovery of worlds beyond our solar system, called exoplanets. NASA has confirmed well over 5,000 of these planets. Among the most prevalent is a class of worlds dubbed "super-Earths." They are worlds ranging from some 30 to 70 percent bigger than Earth. They can be rocky (like Earth) or largely composed of thick, swirling gases. Or both. Around one-third of exoplanets discovered so far are super-Earths, meaning they're awfully common in other solar systems.
The back-of-the-envelope math is compelling. There are likely over a trillion exoplanets in our Milky Way galaxy alone. So as far as we know, the universe must teem with super-Earths — and some of them may be habitable, meaning they harbor conditions that could sustain life, if it exists there.
"They are indeed very exciting planets," Renyu Hu, an exoplanet researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Mashable.
More:
https://mashable.com/article/super-earth-exoplanets-space-discovery
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