The hottest new exoplanet is anything but hot.
Planet OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is almost identical to Earth, except that it’s a ball of ice.
The newly discovered world is the same mass as Earth and orbits its star at the same distance we orbit our sun. But, unlike Earth, this planet’s temperature hovers around negative 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
That makes OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb even more inhospitable than Hoth, the frozen planet where Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker hid from the Imperial forces in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”
The latest find was spotted 13,000 light-years away. Its star is 10,000 times fainter than our sun and is so small, scientists aren’t even positive that it can be considered a star.
NASA confirmed the existence of this cold little planet through a technique known as microlensing. This process has enabled astronomers to find exoplanets thousands of light-years away by “using background stars as flashlights,” according to NASA’s press release. OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is currently the lowest-mass planet to ever be found using the technique.
“This discovery provides more evidence that planets are not only very common but also very diverse,” Yossi Shvartzvald, lead author of the study, told CNN. “They are able to form in strange environments very different from what we’re accustomed to on Earth.”
http://nypost.com/2017/04/27/nasa-finds-earths-frozen-twin-planet/[attachment deleted by admin]
