Scientists have discovered a planet where humanity can escape to when it destroys the Earth (3 photos)

And it is not very far from us. Just forty light years away.





And if we take into account that one light year is the distance that a beam of light travels in a vacuum, and the speed of light is approximately 300 thousand km/sec, then we can calculate how many Earth years will it take for an abstract spaceship made by human hands to reach the new planets. Well, while you are counting how many years it will take our descendants to get there, I will tell you about the new planet.

An international team of scientists discovered the planet using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Scientists say it is one of the few rocky planets discovered that could potentially support humans.



The new planet was named Gliese 12 b. It is the closest temperate planet the size of Earth. The planet is only slightly smaller than Earth and is an “exoplanet” located outside our solar system.

It orbits a red dwarf star and also bears some resemblance to Venus, which is often called Earth's "Twin" due to its overall similarity in size, gravity, and length of year. A year on Gliese 12 b is only 12.8 Earth days, as the planet orbits its star very closely. According to scientists, the planet receives about 1.6 times more energy from its star than Earth does from the Sun.

The temperature on Gliese 12b is around 42°C, which means it is livable. In fact, it is one of the few known planets where humans could theoretically survive.

"It would be inconvenient for humans, but our definition of 'habitability' is that liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet, which is quite possible in this case," said Larissa Palthorpe from the University of Edinburgh.



"Strikingly, this planet is the closest to Earth in size and temperature that we know," Thomas Wilson, one of the study's authors, told the BBC. “Planets like Gliese 12 b are very few and far between, so we can study one of them so closely and learn about its atmosphere and temperature, which is very rare.”