A gravitational miracle: The stars quite literally aligned for astronomers to discover a new super-Earth
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21 May 2020
It is only human to look to the cosmos and ponder if there is another Earth out there. Fortunately, while many members of our species have had our heads pointed towards the ground amid the pandemic, astronomers are looking up at the sky — and lo and behold, they've found a new "super-Earth," the designation for rocky planets more massive than ours, yet with similar conditions otherwise. The finding is one of only a handful of super-Earths discovered to date.
Astronomers at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand came across what the lead author Dr. Herrera Martin describes as a rare planet which has a similar size and orbit to our Earth. The planet has been dubbed OGLE-2018-BLG-0677Lb. Their findings were published in the Astronomical Journal earlier this month.
According to the astronomers' data, this super-Earth's year lasts about 617 days. It travels around a single star that is estimated to be 10 percent less massive than our sun, although its parent star is significantly dimmer; researchers say it could be a dim dwarf star or a "failed star." The planet itself is estimated to be four times Earth's mass, and is located near the Milky Way's central bulge of stars.
One of the most peculiar aspects of this exoplanet's discovery is the way that it was made. The majority of exoplanets that have been discovered so far were found via the "transit method," in which an exoplanet's plane of orbit around their parent star was parallel with our view from Earth. In these cases, the orbiting exoplanet periodically transits in front of its parent star, briefly dimming it from the perspective of us on Earth. Such periodic occlusions can be tracked to determine a planet's mass and size.
Yet OGLE-2018-BLG-0677Lb was discovered via a different means known as gravitational microlensing. In his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein predicted that objects of large mass, things like black holes or stars, would distort space-time. Hence, light bends and distorts around these massive objects. Occasionally this is to the advantage of astronomers, as objects that are generally too distant or dim to observe directly can be briefly magnified by passing massive astrophysical bodies from the perspective of us on Earth. Such observations are known as gravitational microlensing events, and they are rarely so fortuitous: only 2% of discovered exoplanets have been found via microlensing.
According to the astronomers' data, this super-Earth's year lasts about 617 days. It travels around a single star that is estimated to be 10 percent less massive than our sun, although its parent star is significantly dimmer; researchers say it could be a dim dwarf star or a "failed star." The planet itself is estimated to be four times Earth's mass, and is located near the Milky Way's central bulge of stars.
One of the most peculiar aspects of this exoplanet's discovery is the way that it was made. The majority of exoplanets that have been discovered so far were found via the "transit method," in which an exoplanet's plane of orbit around their parent star was parallel with our view from Earth. In these cases, the orbiting exoplanet periodically transits in front of its parent star, briefly dimming it from the perspective of us on Earth. Such periodic occlusions can be tracked to determine a planet's mass and size.
Yet OGLE-2018-BLG-0677Lb was discovered via a different means known as gravitational microlensing. In his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein predicted that objects of large mass, things like black holes or stars, would distort space-time. Hence, light bends and distorts around these massive objects. Occasionally this is to the advantage of astronomers, as objects that are generally too distant or dim to observe directly can be briefly magnified by passing massive astrophysical bodies from the perspective of us on Earth. Such observations are known as gravitational microlensing events, and they are rarely so fortuitous: only 2% of discovered exoplanets have been found via microlensing.
This microlensing event was detected in 2018 by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) using a telescope in Chile, and the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet). Analyzing the data took years.
Though this super-Earth likely does not have optimal conditions for life, such discoveries help give insight into the nature of planetary and solar system development. "In the study of astronomical bodies, the search for extra-solar planets is of particular interest as their characterization not only allows us to infer the similarities or differences in the mechanisms of their formation, but it also helps us to better understand our own solar system," the researchers write in their paper.
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