Astronomers have just found a new one

Humanity has certainly become accustomed to the bourgeois comfort of orbiting the sun and the dependence of its crops on this regularity, just like birthdays and paid holidays. But can we live on a planet that blindly follows its path without attachment? The answer may be no, but we may have a candidate planet for those who want to try it. According to an article from the specialized website Universe Today.

A team of astronomers may have finally discovered the first wandering planet with a mass similar to Earth. Michelle KunimotoThe researcher at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her colleagues previously published the results of their research, April 17 on arXiv. This potential discovery was made possible thanks to data collected by Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)NASA's space telescope searches for exoplanets.

these Wandering planets It wasn't always. If the most massive objects formed on their own without anyone asking, then the smallest, the size of the Earth, were thrown out of their orbit. According to another study revealed in October 2023these now independent planets will be more numerous than those that, disciplined, continue to revolve wisely.

Therefore, our universe is full of lonely and dim planets that are still very difficult to discover. Their low emission of electromagnetic radiation makes them almost impossible to detect and monitor. The only way to identify these stars is to take advantage of their passage between the star and the observation point to analyze the contrast of light. So far, three such planets have been identified. The thing that concerns us today will be the first of…

Read more on Slate.fr