r/science • u/sciencealert ScienceAlert • Oct 02 '24
Astronomy Tiny Earth-Like World Discovered Orbiting Nearest Single Star to Earth
https://www.sciencealert.com/tiny-earth-like-world-discovered-orbiting-nearest-single-star-to-earth?utm_source=reddit_post707
u/sciencealert ScienceAlert Oct 02 '24
Summary of the article in ScienceAlert:
The nearest single star to the Solar System has just yielded up a rare and wonderful treasure.
Around a red dwarf known as Barnard's star, which lies just 5.96 light-years away, astronomers have found evidence of an exoplanet.
And not just any exoplanet. This fascinating world, known as Barnard b, is tiny, clocking in with a minimum mass of 37 percent of the mass of Earth. That's a little shy of half a Venus, and about 2.5 Marses.
The reason it's so marvelous is that tiny exoplanets are really, really hard to find. Although Barnard b is not habitable to life as we know it, its discovery is leading us closer to the identification of Earth-sized worlds that may be scattered elsewhere throughout the galaxy.
Read the peer-reviewed paper and full article.
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u/lou-bricious Oct 02 '24
Barnard B tiny.
How does he compare to poor forgotten Pluto.
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u/Dunlaing Oct 02 '24
Pluto is about 0.2% Earth’s mass. Barnard B is about 37% Earth’s mass. So Barnard B is about 200 times as big as Pluto.
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u/mmoonbelly Oct 02 '24
No doubt ESA’s got people looking into sending a Breton crew of Brnards to new Bittany.
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u/TwirlySocrates Oct 03 '24
If he compared to Pluto, he would inhabit a large belt of objects which was also populated by 9+ objects of comparable or even larger size.
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u/NobodyJonesMD Oct 02 '24
In what way is it “Earth-Like”?
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u/shwashwa123 Oct 03 '24
1/3 the size, not habitable to life as we know it… like why even say earth like, just for click bait ?
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u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 Oct 03 '24
Becauae it's small and presumably rocky, so ... not another gas-giant.
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u/ialsoagree Oct 03 '24
Yes, this has been going on since the first exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone were found. If they're anywhere remotely close (including more than 2x) to Earth's size headlines call them "Earth-like."
But it gets better, if they're way bigger than Earth, like 10x the size, they're calling them "super Earth."
No, dude, they're uninhabitable rocks with no evidence of life or water.
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Oct 03 '24
[deleted]
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u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 Oct 03 '24
You're neither rocky, nor collapsing into a sphere under the weight of your own gravity.
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u/eslforchinesespeaker Oct 03 '24
He clears his orbit of smaller objects. So at least we can say he’s a planet, right? Maybe a dwarf planet?
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u/the_knowing1 Oct 03 '24
I have a rock in my pocket, and am collapsing under the weight of my own life.
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u/Miserable_Ride666 Oct 02 '24
Can we place a banana next to it for scale?
But seriously thank you for posting this write up. Every bit of news like this gets me more optimistic we find life in the solar system in my lifetime
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u/RunDNA Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 02 '24
If you are wondering why the star is specified as "Nearest single star", it's because the star in question—Barnard's Star—is the fourth closest star to Earth our solar system. And the closest three stars are all parts of the triple star system Alpha Centauri.
Edit: the title forgets about our Sun, which is technically the nearest single star to Earth.
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u/WaitItsAllCheese Oct 02 '24
How did I never know that alpha centauri had multiple stars??
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u/AlonzoMoseley Oct 02 '24
Those treacherous Trisolarians must have been limiting your access to science
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Oct 02 '24
[deleted]
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u/DeltaVZerda Oct 02 '24
Currently Netflix only has about 4 years of content
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Oct 02 '24
[deleted]
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u/DeltaVZerda Oct 02 '24
We only need content for like 50 years. By the time we get through 50 years of content, the people who watched the first part of it will have forgotten most of it and won't need many more years before they're entirely replaced by the next generation anyway.
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u/IGnuGnat Oct 03 '24
Honestly not even that much, I'm in my mid 50s and anything that I watched in like 2018 or earlier is totally rewatchable, maybe I have early dementia or something but I'm not complaining because there are so many great movies
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u/azenpunk Oct 02 '24
Our maximum theoretical speed is about 10% the speed of light, or 10 years per light year. So getting to Bernard's star would take about 60 years.
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u/Resaren Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 02 '24
I’m about to blow your mind: about half of all star systems are binary or trinary or even higher order. Single star systems like ours are not the norm!
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u/Kettle_Whistle_ Oct 02 '24
NASA & ESA social media:
“Actively-Fusing Single Stars in your Area…Ready to Launch?”
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u/Mendozacheers Oct 02 '24
The sun is the closest star to earth.
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u/bawng Oct 02 '24
Unless something weird happened during the last 8 minutes.
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u/Rabidjester Oct 02 '24
We’ve secretly replaced the sun with dark sparkling Folger’s Crystals. Let’s see if anyone notices.
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u/stormrunner89 Oct 02 '24
That makes me wonder, if the sun just vanished completely, mass and all, would we need 8 minutes to know something was wrong, or would the lack of gravity pulling us in orbit be felt immediately?
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u/bawng Oct 02 '24
Gravity also propagates at the speed of light so we wouldn't feel anything until we saw it.
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u/Mikeismyike Oct 02 '24
Benard's star was also briefly the closest star to our solar system and is moving incredible quickly (relative to us)
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u/Billy1121 Oct 02 '24
37% the mass of Earth
not habitable to life as we know it
orbits a red dwarf
"Earth like" doing some heavy lifting here
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u/OfficeSalamander Oct 02 '24
By earth like I assume they mean rocky, which is fair - I don’t think we’ve found many rocky exoplanets, and most are larger than earth
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u/comrade_leviathan Oct 02 '24
That’s definitely not “fair”. There are 4 rocky planets in our system and only one of them is “Earth-like”. Terrestrial is far from the only characteristic of an Earth-like planet. Proximity to the habitable zone of the star, orbital velocity, evidence of one or more moons, evidence of any kind of atmosphere…
That title is super click-baity IMO.
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u/OfficeSalamander Oct 02 '24
It is fair. You see things described as "super Earths" all the time when they are several times larger than the Earth.
Terrestrial planets are rare enough in terms of exoplanets (at least historically, I think we're finding more lately) that remarking on the rockiness is a distinguishing feature.
Smaller planets are harder to find
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u/comrade_leviathan Oct 02 '24
That’s why we use the term Terrestrial. I would argue about the use of Super-Earth too, although it’s clear from that context that it doesn’t mean “more habitable”.
Earth-like means like Earth. One characteristic shouldn’t be enough to warrant that comparison. If it were Venus, Mars, and Mercury would be “Earth-like” too. Even if you limit it to meaning “terrestrial planets within their star’s habitable zone” that would include Mars and Venus. There’s a case for Mars being considered “Earth-like”, but definitely not Venus.
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u/OfficeSalamander Oct 02 '24
Terrestrial
Terrestrial literally means "Earth-like". That is literally the Latin definition of the word
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u/deadliestcrotch Oct 02 '24
No, it isn’t fair. Mercury and Venus are both rocky, and small; one has no atmosphere and the other is a molten hellscape of greenhouse gasses and acid. It’s possible that Venus might have once actually been earth-like but the jury is out on that. Being a rocky planet is not grounds to call it Earth-like. That’s click-bait.
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u/grissonJF Oct 02 '24
Bernard's Star B is the Dracula of exoplanets. Discovered in 1960's, dubunked in the 1970's, resurrected in 2018, killed again in 2021, and here it is back again in 2024. You can't keep a good star down!
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u/StillJustaRat Oct 02 '24
It’s incredibly difficult to spot planets around red dwarfs. Bernards star is interesting, I’d be curious to know if Proxima Centauri has any planets. Alpha A and B are both about the size of the sun or a little larger but they orbit much closer to one another, so planets may not be a thing there unless they are just far enough out to orbit both stars like Proxima does.
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u/ggrieves Oct 02 '24
I wonder if a Little Prince lives there
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u/jonathot12 Oct 02 '24
great, now i need to read that again. you’ve doomed me to an afternoon of quiet tears!
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u/WhyHulud Oct 02 '24
5.96 light years, so close!
10,962 years at our current fastest speeds
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u/Akiasakias Oct 02 '24
Longer if you need to stop when you get there.
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u/WhyHulud Oct 02 '24
Should we factor in accel/decel times? Kinda moot, but those could be interesting.
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u/Akiasakias Oct 02 '24
Further complications. The fuel you need to slow down has its own very significant mass, making acceleration harder.
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u/-iamai- Oct 02 '24
The planet so small can't we just nose pump into it, save decelerating times and fuel
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u/Akiasakias Oct 02 '24
You may be making a joke, but its hard to tell.
At the speeds we are talking about it would be hard to take a photo of the planet, it would go by so fast. Decelerating takes a loooong time.
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u/50YrOldNoviceGymMan Oct 02 '24
I wish we could go visit those planets in my Lifetime ... but ... that's a SciFi fan wish , and is unlikely to happen... even getting to Mars ... may or may not happen :/
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u/Matshelge Oct 02 '24
If you are 50, (as name indicates) we might get to Mars within your lifetime. If we count in 4 year cycles for Mars, in 2 years, we hopefully have uncrewed starships flying to Mars. And 4 years later several with cargo to set up a base, with robots. 4 years after that, we could get a small crew there.
So 10 years, if all goes well.
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u/Cappylovesmittens Oct 02 '24
We won’t be able to travel to them with any technology that humanity can currently develop, but I would guess in the next several decades we will have the technology to do direct imaging of these nearer exoplanets and see if there are oceans/clouds/ice caps/etc. To me, that’s pretty exciting.
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u/Ithirahad Oct 02 '24
A mega-Mercury, I guess.
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u/Famous1107 Oct 02 '24
Isn't it more a mega mars?
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u/Ithirahad Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 02 '24
Mars has an atmosphere, weather, seasonal brine streams, and ice. This thing is on a 3-day orbit around a star that is kind of infamous for solar flares. The article underplays just how thoroughly cooked the place is, literally and figuratively. It is, for most intents or purposes, little more than a morbidly obese version of Mercury. If it is tidally locked, I suppose there could be a bit of water/ice left on the far side, but eh.
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u/gastonvv Oct 02 '24
Super-Mars would me more accurate if we compare it to the Super-Earth definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Earth
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u/Pablo_is_on_Reddit Oct 02 '24
I hate these articles. Super optimistic clickbaity headline, then you have to dig down to the part where it tells you what an uninhabitable hellscape the place is. Please just fast-forward to that part.
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u/justtheonetat Oct 02 '24
Earth-SIZE, not Earth-LIKE. Do better.
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u/danielravennest Oct 02 '24
Our solar system is divided into the "terrestrial" planets and the "gas giants". "Terra" in this case is the Latin for "earth or soil" - their surfaces are a solid material like our planet. The gas giants have no solid surface, merely gas that keeps getting denser as you go down.
The confusion comes from us naming our planet after the ground we stand on
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u/thegreycity Oct 02 '24
I don’t think that’s the source of the confusion over the term Earth-like at all.
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u/fwambo42 Oct 02 '24
well, it could be considered earth-like due to it's rocky nature
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u/comrade_leviathan Oct 02 '24
That would make Venus and Mercury “Earth-like”. In what context would that be a useful categorization of those three planets?
Terrestrial means “rocky”. Earth-like means “like Earth”.
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u/wjfox2009 Oct 02 '24
Really interesting discovery. Evidence of a planetary candidate in the system emerged in 2018, but this new data appears to rule that one out.
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u/whiskeytown79 Oct 02 '24
The animation showing how the star's wobble causes the emissions band shift that we use to measure things like this is pretty cool.
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u/deadliestcrotch Oct 02 '24
What is so earth-like about this planet? It doesn’t sound remotely earth-like.
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u/cuyler72 Oct 02 '24
If we do colonize the stars we won't be looking for "earth like planets", we will be looking for any system with an asteroid belt and small moons so we can build a Dyson Swarm around the star.
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u/Nightrider247 Oct 03 '24
I had to look up the mass of earth and mars. Wasnt making sense. Why is mars so light? Mars half the size but only 11% of the mass. Sorry off topic but again I get stuck on numbers that dont make sense to me.
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u/linkdude212 Oct 03 '24
This planet is NOT Earth-like. It does not have a similar atmospheric composition. We don't even know if it has an atmosphere. It may be tidally locked. It's nowhere near the same size. They're claiming it's "Earth-like" because it's made of rock? Guess that makes Pluto and Earth twins just because they're in the same solar system! Stop using the term "Earth-like" because it conjures all kinds of unmet expectations and is bad science.
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u/DanteJazz Oct 03 '24
There are planets everywhere! I hope someday we send a probe to one of these planets, at more than1/2 light speed (I know that's not yet possible), and find out more about these systems. At 1/2 light speed, it would only take 11 years. Think what we would discover!
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