This chart compares artists» concepts of
the smallest known exoplanets (planets orbiting outside the solar system) as of January 2012 to our own planets Mars and Earth.
Proxima b, as the world is known, is among
the smallest known exoplanets, mass-wise, and it's as close to Earth as one can get.
Not exact matches
The planet, named Kepler - 78b, is the
smallest exoplanet for which researchers
know both size and mass.
Red dwarfs are a popular place to hunt for
small exoplanets in the habitable zone — but the stars» radiation bursts might fry chances for life as we
know it.
Many of those planets are among the most nearly Earth - size planets
known: of the 25
smallest - diameter
exoplanets discovered to date, all but one were spotted by Kepler.
Prior scrutiny of the typical star Gliese 876 had rustled up two Jupiter - size companions, and further research revealed a third body, dubbed Gliese 876 d, pegged at 7.5 Earth - masses — the
smallest - mass
exoplanet then
known.
Kepler 19 b, only twice as Earth's diameter, is among the
smallest exoplanets known to date.
The
smallest, coolest
exoplanet known to host water is roughly the size of Neptune, astronomers report in the Sept. 25 Nature.
Recent observations of extrasolar planets suggest that Mercury's structure might not be unique: the two
smallest exoplanets whose densities are
known, Kepler - 10b and Corot - 7b, are also far denser than expected, suggesting they share Mercury's orange - like structure.
This discovery marks a significant increase in the number of
known small - sized planets more akin to Earth than previously identified
exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.
The findings make Kepler 78b the
smallest exoplanet for which the mass and size are
known.
Both qualify as quite
small in the field of
known exoplanets, in which most of the hundreds of worlds that have been discovered are giants larger than Jupiter.
In a new study a team of researchers in Germany, Poland and Bulgaria has used transit timing of a
known massive
exoplanet to identify a hypothetical, much
smaller companion.
Needless to say, all this talk of «Earth - sized» worlds (and the much - hyped «Earth - like» misnomer) has added fuel to the extraterrestrial life question: If there's a preponderance of
small exoplanets - some of which orbit within the «sweet - spot» of the habitable zones of their parent stars - could life as we
know it (or Earth - Brand ™ Life as I like to call it) also be thriving there?
By «sharpening up the dividing line» between these two groups of
small exoplanets, Fulton argues that in the future astronomers will be able to better select where to hunt for alien life on truly habitable «super-Earths» rather than the «mini-Neptunes» with crushing atmospheres that would be «inhospitable to life as we
know it.»
Over at least two years, TESS will survey more than 200,000 stars, and will be able to find many new
exoplanets orbiting these stars, including Earth - sized and super-Earth-sized (larger than Earth but
smaller than Neptune), which are now
known to be the most common in our galaxy.
Red dwarfs are
known to play host to
small rocky
exoplanets, a fact that makes these locations very interesting in the search for habitable «Earth - like»
exoplanets.
The high precision of the Kepler space telescope has allowed us to detect planets that are the size of Earth and somewhat
smaller, but no previous planets have been found that ar... ▽ More Since the discovery of the first
exoplanet we have
known that other planetary systems can look quite unlike our own.