New super-Earth? Chinese scientists detect planet 10 times Earth’s mass in habitable zone

A group of Chinese scientists may have just put a new candidate on the long list of “Earth-like” planets worth watching. Their discovery – a rocky world roughly 10 times the mass of Earth, orbiting a star in the so-called habitable zone – was published this week in Nature and is already generating buzz. The planet, known as Kepler-725 c, is big, hot (although not too hot), and potentially wet.

What is different about Kepler-725 c?

Most low-mass exoplanets (anything around or below ten Earth masses) are notoriously tricky to find, especially if they’re orbiting further from their stars. Traditional detection methods, like spotting the dimming of a star during a transit or measuring the star’s wobble due to a planet’s gravitational tug, tend to favor planets that swing around their suns quickly, often in less than 100 days. That means we’re usually spotting planets that are more like Venus than Earth.

Kepler-725 c breaks that trend. It completes an orbit every 207.5 days, which lands it in the star’s habitable zone – the sweet spot you may have heard about where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist on the surface. Its parent star, Kepler-725, is a late G-type dwarf, not far off our Sun in terms of size and temperature. The planet’s orbit is elliptical (think oval-shaped rather than circular), but on average, scientists say, it receives about 1.4 times the solar energy Earth gets, making it a borderline candidate for habitability. Exciting stuff, right? Well...

Did astronomers actually see Kepler-725 c?

So, as it turns out, those involved didn’t “see” this planet directly. Let me explain.

They inferred its presence by studying the transit timing variations (TTVs) of its neighbor, handily named Kepler-725 b, a warm Jupiter-sized planet with a much shorter 39.64-day orbit. Essentially, Kepler-725 c made its presence known by how it messed with its sibling’s timing – a kind of gravitational photobomb.

This method of detection, however, could prove to be powerful. It sidesteps the usual biases and opens the door to spotting more elusive, potentially habitable worlds, especially as next-gen missions like TESS, PLATO, and China’s Earth 2.0 telescope ramp up.

Life prospects on Kepler-725 c

But the scientists are not getting ahead of themselves. There’s not yet any sign of an atmosphere, never mind life as we know it. A rare find it may be, but until we get some sort of direct imaging or atmospheric analysis, Earth continues to be our only known natural home.

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