Thursday, January 29, 2026

Finding A Frozen Earth In Old Data

This artist's illustration shows HD 137010 b, a so-called Cold Earth detected around a Sun-like star about 146 light-years away. It's only slightly larger than Earth, and has nearly the same length orbit. It's on the outskirts of the star's habitable zone, and is even colder than Mars. It's a good target for meaningful follow-up observations. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Keith Miller (Caltech/IPAC)

Finding Earth-like planets is the primary driver of exoplanet searches because as far as we know, they're the ones most likely to be habitable. Astronomers sifting through data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope have found a remarkably Earth-like planet, but with one critical difference: it's as cold as Mars.



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