Scientists have discovered a super Earth orbiting the red dwarf Barnard just six light years from the solar system.
The team led by Ignasi Ribas from the Institute of Space Sciences in Spain discovered Barnard’s b-star planet with a mass 3.2 times that of Earth and completed an orbital ring after 233 days. The results of the study of the second closest exoplanet to the solar system were published in the journal Nature on November 14, according to IFL Science.
Barnard’s b star is getting a lot of attention because the planet is so close. Barnard himself is the only star closest to the Sun. In terms of distance, only the Alpha Centauri system consists of three stars that are closer, including Proxima Centauri, the red dwarf just 4.2 light-years away.
The Ribas group found Barnard’s star b by calculating the radial velocity with an accuracy of 99.2%. They used more than 700 observations of Barnard’s Star from data collected over 20 years.
Barnard or GJ 699 has a very low mass, only 1/7 of the Sun, and emits energy at 2% of the Sun. The chances of finding liquid water on star b of planet Barnard are slim because it is five times farther away than the habitable zone around the host star. If it were an icy planet, it would most likely freeze with an average temperature of around -170 ° C, according to Ribas.
