Space & Astronomy

Distant 'ice ball' exoplanet discovered

By T.K. Randall
April 28, 2017 ·  6 comments

The newly discovered world is a very cold place indeed. Image Credit: CC BY 4.0 ESO/L. Calcada It might not be the best place to look for signs of alien life, but the new planet, which has been assigned the rather inelegant moniker OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, happens to be the smallest extrasolar world ever found using the gravitational microlensing planet-hunting technique.

Situated a whopping 13,000 light years away, this distant planet is probably far too cold to support life, even though it orbits its parent star at a distance similar to that of the Earth from the Sun.

The reason for this is because its star is very small and dim - roughly 7.8 percent the mass of the Sun - meaning that it might not even be a proper star at all.


Source: Scientific American | Comments (6)

Tags: Extrasolar Planets