Hope for extraterrestrial life Swiss researchers discover super-Earth deep in space

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5.2.2025 - 15:35

The new planet is called HD 20794 d.
The new planet is called HD 20794 d.
Screenshot Universität Genf

An international team of researchers including the University of Geneva has discovered an exoplanet called HD 20794 d. This super-Earth makes it possible to test new hypotheses about extraterrestrial life.

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  • An international team of researchers has discovered a new exoplanet.
  • It is 19.7 light years away from Earth.
  • The planet moves in an elliptical orbit between the habitable and non-habitable zones and could potentially harbor water.

An international team of researchers - including people from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Geneva - has discovered a new planet outside our solar system. It bears the name HD 20794 d.

This Earth-like planet is much larger than our Earth. It is part of a planetary system that contains two other planets.

The planet moves in an elliptical orbit around its star, alternating between the habitable and non-habitable zones. This zone is the area in which liquid water could exist, as the University of Geneva recently announced. The discovery was published in the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics".

19.7 light years away

The solar system to which HD 20794 d belongs is 19.7 light years away from us, which is considered relatively close by astronomical standards. Xavier Dumusque, a scientist at the University of Geneva and co-author of the study, told French-speaking Swiss radio station RTS that the planet is of particular interest because it orbits a star that is close to us. Images of the planet could be taken in the near future, which would make it possible to search for life on it.

The discovery was made possible by data collected over two decades using various telescopes, according to the University of Geneva.

Exoplanets are celestial bodies orbiting other stars outside our solar system. Since the first discovery of an exoplanet in 1995, for which Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019, over 7,000 such planets have been identified.

The editor wrote this article with the help of AI.