An Ocean Planet With The Possibility Of Life Found 100 Light-Years Away From Earth@TheCosmosNews

#thecosmosnews The job of NASA s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is simply surreal. Imagine traveling a thousand years back in time, then explaining to someone how future scientists will have a machine that detects alien worlds floating at distances beyond the capacity of human comprehension. That s TESS. Since 2018, this space-borne instrument has literally found thousands of exoplanets. We have eyes on one shaped like a rugby ball, another that seems covered in lava oceans and even an orb that rains glass -- sideways. On Wednesday, international scientists announced that one such foreign realm, dutifully hunted by TESS, may be covered in a blanket of life s elixir: water. I m not sure about you, but I m getting flashbacks to that scene in Interstellar where Cooper lands on a world with waves the size of skyscrapers. This possible "ocean world," according to the team s study, published this month in The Astronomical Journal, lives some 100 light-years away from Earth, orbiting within a binary star system nestled into the Draco constellation. Named TOI-1452 b, it is suspected to be about 70% larger than our planet, to be roughly five times as massive, to spin to the rhythm of seven Earth days and to have a temperature neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on its surface.