Life on the planet can be adapted to different levels of light and temperature, scientists suggest.
Scientists have discovered an eccentric exoplanet that regularly moves in and out of its habitable zone. Writing about it Inverse.
The planet was discovered near the red dwarf Gliese 514, located about 24 light years from Earth. The researchers analyzed data from three observatories and three more satellites collected over the past 25 years.
Gliese 514 was found orbiting a super-Earth. It is a rocky planet, at least five times the mass of Earth. It is assumed that it has a very unusual trajectory of rotation. It throws it out of the habitable zone for 93 days from a 140-day orbit.
“We have not yet found evidence of other planets in the system, especially those massive enough to overly bend the orbit of Gliese 514 b,” said Turin observatory astrophysicist Mario Damasso, lead author of the study. .
Scientists suggest that most biomass growth on the planet will occur in “summer”, which should be fast, like an arctic summer on steroids.
“But how life can find niches, one can imagine organisms that use the decline in competition” in winter “for their own prosperity. It is also possible to imagine that there may be” hot “and” cold “ecosystems. on a planet that exploits each other and hibernates at times, ”said Columbia University astrobiologist Caleb Scharf.
He also believes that life on the planet can be adapted to different levels of light and temperature.
“Gliese 514 is a star very close to us, and in the future we will be able to study it in more detail. Observing the system could give us more accurate parameters of the found planet, and possibly find smaller ones. that planet near here, ”the study’s author concluded.
Recall, researchers from the University of Hokkaido in Japan, along with NASA scientists, discovered two missing units of DNA and RNA, suggesting that genetic units could carry asteroids to promote the development of life from space to Earth.
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Source: korrespondent
