merelygifted:

A new planet 100 light-years away could be suitable for life : NPR

An international team of scientists says it has discovered two new “super-Earth” type planets about 100 light-years away, one of which may be suitable for life.

Unlike any of the planets in our solar system, the nearly 1,600 known super-Earths are larger than Earth, but lighter than icy planets like Uranus and Neptune.

Researchers at Belgium’s University of Liège announced Wednesday that they found another one while using Earth-based telescopes to confirm the existence of a different planet initially discovered by a NASA satellite in the same solar system.

NASA’s satellite found planet LP 890-9b, which is about 30% larger than Earth and orbits its sun in just 2.7 days. ULiège researchers used their SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) telescopes in Chile and Spain to take a closer look at the planet with high-precision cameras.

That’s when the stargazers discovered another planet, LP 890-9c (renamed SPECULOOS-2c by the ULiège researchers), which is 40% larger than Earth and takes 8.5 days to orbit its sun.  …