Astronomers think they’ve found a celestial unicorn: a potentially habitable near twin of Earth with the same size and perhaps even year-length as our own familiar planet, circling a star much like our own. The only problem is that they’re not sure it’s really there.
The first—and so far only—hint of the potential planet arrived in observations from NASA’s now retired Kepler space telescope. In 2017 the telescope recorded a sudden 10-hour-long dimming of HD 137010, a star only slightly less massive and luminous than our sun that is located some 146 light-years away in the constellation of Libra. Initially flagged by volunteers sifting through archival Kepler data as part of the crowdsourced Planet Hunters project, the signal matched the profile of a tiny, rocky exoplanet passing—or transiting—in front of the star. After further analysis, a team of astronomers reported the possible discovery on Tuesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
If confirmed, this world would officially be called HD 137010 b—but confirmation has proved difficult, to say the least.
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