20 astronomical scientists from Japan and the US have found a planet with many Earth-like characteristics, orbiting a very “cool” red dwarf star.

The research was conducted by a group of scientists from many leading institutes, schools, and research centers in Japan and the US such as Tokyo Institute of Technology, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, NASA…

Dubbed K2-415b, the new world 72 light years away was first discovered in 2017 by the Kepler space telescope, but only now have its special properties been revealed. .

According to Sputnik, scientists analyzed high-resolution images and near-infrared spectra of K2-415b and found that it must be a rocky planet like Earth.

The planet has a mass between 1.3 and 5.7 Earth masses, with the highest possibility being 3 Earth masses. It is one of the smallest exoplanets ever discovered in stars dozens of light years or more away.

This size still puts it in the range of planets similar to Earth and on the list of worlds that need attention in the journey to find life in outer space.

It orbits quite close to the parent star, but this parent star is an M-type dwarf, a red dwarf, the coldest, smallest and most numerous main sequence star in the Milky Way galaxy containing Earth. This new planet’s star K2-415 has only 16% of our Sun’s mass.

“Small planets around M dwarfs are a good laboratory to explore the atmospheric diversity of rocky planets and the conditions under which a rocky planet can exist” – scientists said .

To learn more about the planet and its habitability, scientists will need to study its atmosphere, which is expected to be done using the most powerful space telescope today, the James Webb. of NASA/ESA/CSA (space agencies of the US – Europe – Canada).

The research has just been published online on ArXiv and is awaiting peer review for official publication in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal.