Astronomers have announced the discovery of a super-Earth exoplanet, Kepler-725c, located 2,472 light-years away, within the habitable zone of its star. This groundbreaking discovery, made by an international team led by the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, marks a significant advancement in the search for potentially habitable planets.
Kepler-725c, approximately 10 times the mass of Earth, orbits its Sun-like star every 207.5 days. The planet's location within the habitable zone suggests the potential for liquid water on its surface, a key ingredient for life as we know it. This discovery is particularly notable because it was achieved using the Transit Timing Variation (TTV) technique, which analyzes subtle changes in the orbit of a known gas giant, Kepler-725b, to infer the presence of the hidden planet.
This innovative TTV method opens new avenues for detecting exoplanets, especially those that might be missed by traditional methods. The team's findings, published in Nature Astronomy, highlight the potential of this technique to identify low-mass planets within the habitable zones of Sun-like stars, paving the way for future explorations and potentially answering the question of whether we are alone in the universe.