Gadgetory

here's some cool news we've got a new galactic neighbor astronomers have found a rocky earth-sized exoplanet that's super close to our solar system well it's actually 39 light years away but it's still the third closest transiting exoplanet we've ever found this new world was discovered by an array of telescopes in Chile each night the telescope's scanned the night sky measuring the brightness of various stars this star and its exoplanet are particularly exciting for scientists both because they're so close and because the star is red for red shorts are much smaller and fainter than stars like our Sun so we'll actually be able to see this planet and study it in greater detail we may even be able to take an in-depth peek inside the planet's atmosphere and figuring out the gases that surround a planet could tell us if any biological life-forms are present on the surface below unfortunately this exoplanet probably doesn't have any life on it it's much closer to its star than we are to the Sun so the coolest it ever gets is about the same temperature as your kitchen oven on maximum heat still astronomers rarely get to study the atmospheres of exoplanets so figuring out the gasses on this world will be really good practice