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Welcome to Your New Earth! Beware of Red Sunlight - Science News - Playfuls.com - Science & Technology
Forget Mars or Titan’s icy hopes of extra-terrestrial life: scientists claim they have discovered the first planet that could allow the existence of liquid water on its surface.

Using the ESO 3.6-m telescope, a team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists discovered something they called “a super-Earth”- about 5 times the mass of our planet-that orbits a star included in the category of red dwarfs. The star, dubbed Gliese 581, is already known to be orbited by a Neptune-mass planet (fifteen to seventeen earth masses). The Neptune-mass exo-planet orbits just 6 million kilometers (0.04 AU) from Gliese 581, and so is estimated to have a surface temperature of 150 °C, despite how dim the star is. It orbits its host star in 5.4 days.

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