{"id":223897,"date":"2025-10-24T04:21:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T09:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/newly-discovered-super-earth-offers-prime-target-in-search-for-alien-life"},"modified":"2025-10-24T04:21:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T09:21:36","slug":"newly-discovered-super-earth-offers-prime-target-in-search-for-alien-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/newly-discovered-super-earth-offers-prime-target-in-search-for-alien-life","title":{"rendered":"Newly discovered \u2018super-Earth\u2019 offers prime target in search for alien life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/newly-discovered-super-earth-offers-prime-target-in-search-for-alien-life.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The discovery of a possible \u201csuper-Earth\u201d less than 20 light-years from our own planet is offering scientists new hope in the hunt for other worlds that could harbor life, according to an international team including researchers from Penn State. They dubbed the exoplanet, named GJ 251 c, a \u201csuper-Earth\u201d as data suggest it is almost four times as massive as Earth, and likely to be a rocky planet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe look for these types of planets because they are our best chance at finding life elsewhere,\u201d said Suvrath Mahadevan, the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Astronomy at Penn State and co-author of a paper about the discovery published in <a href=\"http:\/\/doi.org\/10.3847\/1538-3881\/ae0e20\" target=\"_blank\"><i>The Astronomical Journal<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe exoplanet is in the habitable or the \u2018Goldilocks Zone,\u2019 the right distance from its star that liquid water could exist on its surface, if it has the right atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The discovery of a possible \u201csuper-Earth\u201d less than 20 light-years from our own planet is offering scientists new hope in the hunt for other worlds that could harbor life, according to an international team including researchers from Penn State. They dubbed the exoplanet, named GJ 251 c, a \u201csuper-Earth\u201d as data suggest it is almost [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}