A new paper by an international group of astronomers is dedicated to an interesting discovery — a candidate for an Earth-like planet with similar mass and orbital parameters. With some stretch, it can be said that a twin of Earth has been found.
One problem — on average, it is colder there than on Mars.
The discovery is based on the analysis of archival data from the Kepler space telescope (K2 mission), which recorded a transit — a decrease in the brightness of a star caused by the passage of an exoplanet in front of it. The orbital period lasting one Earth year allowed only a single registration of the event, which currently keeps the object HD 137010 b in the category of exoplanet candidates.
The exoplanet HD 137010 b orbits a star similar to the Sun (K-dwarf), but colder and dimmer. Because of this, the amount of energy received by the planet is significantly less than that of Earth, making its climate potentially extremely cold. Calculations show that the average surface temperature could drop below −68 °C, which is lower than the average temperature on Mars (−65 °C).
The snowball planet is located nearly at the edge of the habitable zone of its star, which is about 146 light-years away from us. According to the information collected by Kepler, the planet passed across the disk of its star for 10 hours, which is only 3 hours less than Earth would take to cross the disk of the Sun.
Based on the telescope data, calculations of the orbit and mass of the exoplanet HD 137010 b were made, which turned out to be slightly larger than Earth. It is a rare stroke of luck to discover an Earth-like planet on a long orbit, rather than near the lethal heat of the central star.
Additionally, the average temperature of Earth without an atmosphere and greenhouse gases would be around −18 °C. This is also not a comfortable option for life. The presence of an atmosphere in distant worlds increases the chances of biological life based on water — either similar to or like that on Earth.
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