Detection of super-cold ice planets with mass like Earth

NASA astronomers discovered an ultra-cold planet with a mass similar to Earth and orbiting its star at the same distance as the Earth orbiting the Sun.

The newly discovered planet is OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb , about 13,000 light years from Earth. The planet orbits a star so small that scientists are not sure if it's really a star, Sci Tech Daily reported on April 26.

OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb virtually does not exist because of the cold.(Photo: NASA).

According to them, it could be a brown dwarf , a star-like object but the core is not hot enough to produce energy through nuclear fusion. This special star has a mass of only 7.8% of the Sun. It could also be a super-cold dwarf star like Trappist-1, a star system containing 7 planets about the size of the Earth.

According to the research team, OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is almost impossible to survive the life of an extremely cold, even cooler planet than Pluto in the Solar System, to the extent that its surface water will close. tape if exist.

Scientists found the planet by means of a technique called gravitational amplification (microlensing) . "This ice ball is the lowest mass planet discovered through gravitational amplification," said Yossi Shvartzvald, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. in the report published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The discovery of OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb will help scientists better understand the distribution of planets in the Milky Way.