NASA Discovers ‘Iceball’ Planet Through Microlensing

NASA scientists have found a new "iceball" planet that has the same mass as the planet Earth's and orbits its star at the same distance that Earth orbits the Sun. According to the researchers, the exoplanet is too cold to host life as its parent star is really faint. The discovery, however, is being said to be important because it will allow the scientists to understand the types of planetary systems that exist beyond the Solar System.

Called OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, the iceball planet that is located nearly 13,000 light-years away was discovered with the help of microlensing. It is a process by which distant celestial objects are detected by using background stars as flashlights.

According to NASA, when a star travels precisely in front of a bright star in the background, the foreground star’s gravity focuses the light of the background star and makes it appear brighter. Furthermore, a planet orbiting the foreground object may cause more blip in the brightness of the star.

The star that the iceball planet orbits has only 7.8 percent of the mass that the Sun does; therefore, the research team is not too sure if it is a star at all. The astronomers are speculating that OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb’s host star could be a brown dwarf, which means its core is not too hot to produce energy through nuclear fusion.

The scientists have also indicated that the parent star could be an ultra-cool dwarf star. As the host star is so faint, OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb would be extremely cold .

According to the researchers, the planet could possibly be colder than Pluto and any surface water would be frozen. A CNN report likened the planet to the icy world Hoth from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, but even colder. Therefore, neither humans nor tauntauns (inhabitants of Hoth) can survive on the exoplanet.