New planet near Earth may have life

Astronomers say the planet is in the habitable zone, where liquid water could be present.

The newly discovered planet GJ 251c belongs to a red dwarf system, 18.2 light-years from Earth and is located in the constellation Gemini. Photo: University of California Irvine.

At least four times more massive than our own planet, GJ 251c is classified as a super-Earth – a term used to describe rocky planets that are larger and more massive than Earth. This makes GJ 251c one of the best candidates for finding alien life. Image: Corey Beard, el al., (2025).

Scientists have not yet been able to confirm the existence of an atmosphere or life on GJ 251c, but they believe the planet is in a favorable position to support life. A new telescope could reveal this in the next decade. Photo: Penn State.

"This discovery is one of the most promising options in the search for atmospheric signs of life elsewhere in the next 5-10 years," said study co-author Professor Suvrath Mahadevan of Pennsylvania State University (USA). Photo: Corey Beard, el al., (2025).

In the habitable zone, also known as the Goldilocks zone, conditions are just right to allow liquid water to exist on the surface of a planet with the right atmosphere. Photo: NASA.

According to a report in The Astronomical Journal, the planet GJ 251c was discovered thanks to observations spanning more than 20 years. Photo: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith).

In addition to planet GJ 251c, researchers also discovered another planet in the same system, named GJ 251b, which was discovered in 2020 and takes about 14 days to complete an orbit around the central star at a distance of 12.2 million km. Photo: Benoit Gougeon, Université de Montréal.

Based on data collected from telescopes around the world, a team of astronomers, including Professor Mahadevan, obtained precise information to complete measurements of the radial velocity of GJ 251b. Photo: Northrop Grumman.

The team combined old data with new, highly accurate observations made using the HPF instrument, an infrared spectrometer installed on the Hobby-Eberly telescope in Texas. Photo: Shutterstock.

Thanks to that, scientists have discovered a second planet signal. It is a planet with a mass four times that of Earth and takes 54 days to complete an orbit around its central star. Photo: Mark A. Garlick/markgarlick.com.

Readers are invited to watch the video : Universe map with more than 900,000 stars, galaxies and black holes. Source: THĐT1.

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