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It is believed that finding a distant exoplanet that shares the same characteristics as Earth is very rare. However, astronomers were recently able to detect one particular exoplanet with a star that has a striking resemblance to the Earth and the Sun.
Express reports that astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, detected the exoplanet-star pair, seeing the similar characteristics as the Earth and the Sun. The Institute describes the pair as being the “mirror image” of the planet and the Sun and is located 3,000 light-years away from Earth. Whether the exoplanet, now formally referred to as KOI-456.04, could truly have conditions that could support life as Earth does, remains to be seen.
This particular exoplanet was seen to orbit a star that is similar in appearance as the sun, which is known as Kepler-160, which produces a lot of visible light. This trait is something not many stars that have exoplanets in orbit appear to do. Kepler-160 also happens to be around the same size as the sun as well, but with a radius that is 10 percent larger with a surface temperature that is 300 degrees cooler compared to the Sun.
The significance of this discovery is that the majority of stars that exoplanets orbit would usually be known as a red dwarf kind of star. Instead of light, these kinds of stars would produce radiation. This also creates a problem because the amount of radiation these red dwarf stars have would be enough to fry an exoplanet that may get a little too close.
In other related news, the findings from a study conducted by scientists from NASA and ESA could potentially change the origins of the universe, especially during the Big Bang incident. Their research found no proof of Population III stars - stars that are formed from the remaining materials following the Big Bang - back when the universe was around 500 million years old.
But going further back between 500 million to one billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers found only the presence of Population I and Population II stars, which are known to be “modern” stars. This would suggest that these types of stars had already been existing prior to the Big Bang.
