Astronomers find Earth-sized planet 146 light-years away

Astronomers have located a candidate planet that is Earth-sized and potentially habitable, uncovered just 146 light-years away. Named HD 137010 b, the planet orbits a sun-like star and is about 6% larger than Earth.

An international team of astronomers identified the planet using 2017 data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope. The planet completes an orbit every 355 days, very similar to Earth’s year.

“What’s very exciting about this particular Earth-sized planet is that its star is only [about] 150 light-years away,” said co-author Dr. Chelsea Huang from the University of Southern Queensland. She noted that the next best candidate is four times farther away.

The discovery has a distinctive origin. Study lead author Dr. Alexander Venner first spotted the faint signal as a high school student participating in a citizen science project. “It was an amazing experience to go back to this work and dig up such an important discovery,” Venner said.

While the planet sits in the habitable zone, its star is cooler than our sun. This means the surface temperature might resemble Mars, potentially dropping below -70C.

Dr. Sara Webb, an astrophysicist, called the discovery “very exciting” but stated that scientists need more data to confirm it. Since they detected only one transit, it remains a “candidate” planet. Webb suggests it could be a “super snowball”—a big, icy world with frozen water.

Despite being near, Webb reminded that travel there would still take tens of thousands of years with the latest technology Earth has. The team published their findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters this week.