The discovery of a rock planet is very similar to the globe

Astronomers find a rocky planet about the size of Earth and 39 light years away from us.

The planet is about the size of Earth

An article in the journal Nature on November 12 said GJ 1132b - the name of a rock-like planet that is quite similar to the earth - revolves around a star 39 light-years away. It is about 16% larger than our Earth.

GJ 1132b planet illustration.(Photo: Nature).

David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US, and colleagues discovered GJ 1132b.

Drake Deming, an astronomer at the University of Maryland in the US, said that because GJ 1132b is only 39 light-years away from the Earth, researchers can use telescopes to study its atmosphere.

"This is the closest object to Earth among the rocky planets people have discovered so far. It is the most important of all the planets we find outside the solar system," Deming said. .

Even so, life cannot exist on GJ 1132b because its surface temperature reaches more than 230 degrees Celsius - too hot for water to exist in liquid form. The surface temperature is too high because GJ 1132b is only 2.25 million km away from its star - 26 times more than the distance between Venus and the sun.

GJ 1132b rotates around the star for 1.6 days - much shorter than the time the earth revolves around the sun