The exoplanet would certainly never be able to harbor life as we know it, but the discovery gives scientists hope of being able to carry out similar observations on planets that have better conditions to be able to generate living matter.
“My first thought was: wow, we really have the opportunity to discover the atmospheres of Earth-like planets” tweets Natalie Batalha, professor at the University of California and one of the hundreds of researchers who helped develop the ground-breaking telescope.
Their study of the exoplanet WASP-39, a gas giant orbiting a star 700 light-years away, will soon be published in the scientific journal Nature.
— For my part, this opens a door to future research on super-Earths (planets larger than Earth, but smaller than Neptune) or even Earth-like planets, says Pierre-Olivier Lagage, astrophysicist at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).
The discovery will also help scientists find out more about how WASP-39 formed, says Nasa in a press release. The exoplanet has a mass equivalent to a quarter of Jupiter’s, but a diameter 1.3 times larger.