The U.S. Space Agency (NASA) thinks that has detected an exoplanet of a size equivalent to 2/ thirds of the Earth and, if so, would the world closer to our planet beyond our solar system.
Astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope NASA found this "exoplanet candidate," called so far UCF-1.01 which is 33 light years and makes it "possibly" the closest to our solar system that are smaller than to Earth. Exoplanets are those orbiting stars beyond our solar system and, as highlighted by NASA, to date only a few have been found smaller than that of our planet.
Spitzer had already conducted traffic studies exoplanets, but the UCF-1.01 is the first identification, so scientists believe that the telescope can join the research to find potentially habitable planets."We found strong evidence of a very small planet, very hot and close, with the help of the Spitzer Space Telescope," said Kevin Stevenson, of the University of Central Florida, who participated in the discovery. Stevenson and his team were studying a planet the size of Neptune, GJ 436b, previously found to be orbiting the red dwarf star GJ 436, when they found this new planet. In the data recorded by Spitzer, astronomers noticed slight decreases in the amount of infrared light from the star, falls apart due to the GJ 436b.
A review of archival data from the telescope showed that falls were recurrent, suggesting that a second planet may be orbiting the star. This technique, used by a number of observatories including the Space NASA's Kepler mission, is based on transits to detect exoplanets. The duration of a journey, and the small decrease in the number of registered light reveals the basic properties of an exoplanet, such as its size and its distance from its star.In the case of UCF-1.01, its diameter would be about eight thousand 400 kilometers, or 2 thirds of the Earth and would turn very tightly around GJ 436, about seven times the distance from Earth to the Moon.Given this proximity to its star, much closer than Mercury is to our sun, the surface temperature of the exoplanet would be over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit (about 600 degrees Celsius).