An alien Earth that just might be habitable has been discovered in years-old records, thanks to sharp-eyed astronomers who gave the data a second look.
- The exoplanet, known as Kepler-1649c, is only 6% wider than Earth, and receives 75% as much starlight as Earth gets from our sun. It’s so close to its parent star, a dim red dwarf 300 light-years from Earth, that its year lasts only 19.5 Earth days.
- NASA’s Kepler space telescope captured the telltale transit data about Kepler-1649c during its primary space mission, which ended in 2013. But a computer program that was designed to identify potential planets in Kepler data, known as Robovetter, mislabeled the planet as a “false positive.”
- All-too-human members of the Kepler False Positive Working Group spotted the mistake and published their findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. For what it’s worth, Kepler-1649c lies in its parent star’s habitable zone — where conditions may be conducive for sustaining life, depending on what kind of atmosphere the planet has.
Andrew Vandenburg of the University of Texas at Austin is the principal author of the paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, titled “A Habitable-Zone Earth-Sized Planet Rescued From False Positive Status.” Co-authors include Pamela Rowden, Steve Bryson, Jeffrey Coughlin, Natalie Batalha, Karen Collins, David Latham, Susan Mullally, Knicole Colon, Chris Henze, Chelsea Huang and Samuel Quinn. Their findings will be the subject of a Reddit Ask Me Anything session from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PT Friday.
