‘Young Earths’ might be easier to find than we thought

[Mike Wehner]

• A new study suggests that Earth-like planets may be easy to spot in space when they're very young.
• Rocky worlds originate as "magma oceans" that put off enough heat to be detectible using infrared technology.
• Going forward, we may be able to catalog many new worlds that will eventually become Earth-alikes.

Astronomers that hunt for exoplanets have a long list of things they'd love to find, but near the top of the list are Earth-like planets. We don't yet have the technology to peer onto a distant planet's surface and tell if there's life hanging around, but we can estimate a planet's composition and even the makeup of its atmosphere by gazing at it from afar.

Now, a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal suggests that despite our struggle to find many Earth-like planets, they may be more common than anyone would have guessed.

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‘Young Earths’ might be easier to find than we thought originally appeared on BGR.com on Sun, 7 Jun 2020 at 10:03:09 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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