After decades of searching, astronomers have discovered some of the strongest evidence so far of exoplanets orbiting the star of Barnard, the nearest star system. The four planets are classified as undergrounds because each has about 19% to 34% of our planet’s mass, according to a new survey.
“It’s a really exciting discovery – Barnard’s star is our cosmic neighbor, and we still know so little about it. But we are advancing with the accuracy of these new instruments of previous generations,” said the main author of the study Ritvik Basant, a student of doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, in a statement.
Barnard’s star, discovered by American astronomer EE Barnard in 1916, is a red dwarf of low mass, one of the most common types of stars.
In the last decade, astronomers have found that many of these stars have multiple rocky planets orbiting them. With this, the Maro-X, an instrument mounted on the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, designed to look for exoplanets orbiting red dwarfs. The instrument seeks planets detecting the subtle oscillation of the stars as the severity of the planets in orbit pulls their star hosts, known as a radial speed technique.
Using Maro-X, the study team spotted the less massive exoplanet ever found, and expects this to bring to the discovery of more underground exoplanets throughout the cosmos.
Astronomers believe that smaller exoplanets can have a more varied composition than the larger exoplanets detected so far. Finding more tiny worlds with the latest and highly sensitive instruments can open a new way of understanding how planets form – and what can be habitable to life.
Four tiny worlds
The planets are so small that they are more analogous to Mars, according to Basant, and when compared to our solar system, each of the four is within the distance from Mercury’s orbit.
They closely orbit Barnard’s star, revolving around its star host in a matter of days, compared to the year the earth leads to complete an orbit around the sun.
The outermost planet takes less than seven days to complete an orbit, while the innermost planet has an orbital period of less than three days, Basant said.
Proximity to a price
The planets are so close to the star that their surfaces are probably too hot to be habitable.
“When Barnard’s star was young and active… The star exploded these small planets with X-UV radiation, frequent eruptions and dense winds. Because these planets are inferior to Earth, they probably do not have atmospheres, water and life,” said Edward Guinan, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania University in an email.
Planets of this size are widely unexplored beyond our solar system, which makes it a significant step as astronomers seek planets with earth mass around sun -like stars, Basant said.
“Much of what we do can be incremental, and sometimes it is difficult to see the general picture. But we find something that humanity hopefully will know this feeling is incredible,” said study co -author Jacob Bean, professor at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
The search for nearby planets
Although the next system Centauri is the closest to our solar system, at a distance of 4.25 light years, it comprises three stars that circulate to each other, making Barnard’s star the nearest star system. Now astronomers know that planets orbit the two star systems closest to our solar system.
Barnard’s star served as a kind of white whale for astronomers over the decades, while they tried to find evidence of planets orbiting it, only to be refuted as false positives later, “probably due to the limited sensitivity of previous instruments,” Basant said.
Many exoplanets have been discovered as they move, or pass in front of their host star, creating an observable drop in star light, suggesting the presence of a planet. But the elusive planets orbiting Barnard’s star do not transit, which means they do not pass in front of their star from the perspective of telescopes on Earth and cannot be detected with powerful space observatories such as James Webb space telescope.
The research team, led by Bean, captured data from Barnard star over 112 nights covering a period of three years. The data showed evidence of three planets orbiting Barnard’s star, two of which had previously been suggested as potential planets.
The researchers then combined their findings with captured data using the Espresso instrument in the Very Large Telescope in Chile by a different team that wrote a study in October 2024. The combined data set confirmed the existence of an exoplanet room.
“We observed it at different times in different days. Basant.
Maroo-X, who has begun as a temporary instrument of “visitor”, is now being converted into a permanent after his detections.
“I am very happy to see that the new Maro-X data provide independent confirmation of the Planet Be of CED candidates, and along with the Espresso data, the analysis makes detection significantly more robust,” said Jonay González Hernández, the main author of the October 2024 article and a researcher at the Sugarcane Astrophysics Institute in Spain.
“Finally, real planets were discovered around Barnard’s star after several fake alarms in the last [50 anos]”Said Guinan.
This content was originally published in Understand the impact of the discovery of the planets orbiting Barnard’s star on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil

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