Astronomers confused because of the giant version of the earth

The Kepler space telescope detected a planet with a hard surface like the globe, but its size was 17 times larger than our planet.

In a conference of the American Astronomical Society in Boston, Massachusetts, US on June 2, astronomers announced an interesting discovery of the Kepler space telescope. It is an earth-like planet and revolves around a star about 560 light-years away. Astronomers call it Kepler-10c , the BBC reports.

Kepler-10c planet illustration.It revolves around a star who is 11 billion years old.(Photo: BBC)

The size of Kepler-10c confuses astronomers. Historically, scientists have always thought that such large planets would absorb a lot of hydrogen gas to become giant gas orbs like Jupiter or Neptune.

Professor Dimitar Sasselov, an expert at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US, says that Kepler-10c is bigger than the "super-earths" that humans have discovered before.

"Its size is more than 17 times the globe. Its material density is 7.5g / cm ³ - much larger than the density of 5.5 g / cm ³ of the earth , " Sasselov said.

One interesting thing is that Kepler-10c revolves around a star who is about 11 billion years old. With such age, the star was born in the early universe. It was a time when stars began to explode to create heavy elements - materials needed to create rocky planets.

"The existence of Kepler-10c shows that rocky planets can be born earlier than our calculations. If you can create rocks, you can also create life," Sasselov said.