Planet Located 1200 Light Years Away From Earth Could Harbor Life

A planet located at a distance of 1,200 light-years from Earth has been speculated to have the possibility of surface liquid water, and hence has been reportedly deemed a good prospect for being a habitable world by a team of researchers. Named Kepler-62f, the planet is one of the celestial worlds discovered by the ongoing Kepler Mission in 2013 and is apparently 40 percent times the size of the Earth.

The prospective habitable world is located towards the constellation Lyra's direction; however the mission itself did not reveal any information about the planet's orbit shape, atmosphere or its composition. A team of researchers from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) came up with probable scenarios to understand whether the planet could sustain life and be habitable.

The atmosphere on Earth is made up of 0.04 percent of carbon dioxide. However, since Kepler-62f is farther away from its star compared to the distance between Earth and Sun, it would need a higher amount of carbon dioxide to be warm enough to support liquid water on its surface, in addition to preventing it from freezing.  After making the assumption of different amounts of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, the researchers carried out various computer simulations and observed numerous situations that would let the planet be habitable.

The experts subsequently found that Kepler-62f would need an atmosphere composed totally out of carbon dioxide, with a thickness three to five times that of the Earth, for the planet to be perennially habitable. Furthermore, such a state is in fact quite possible for the planet owing to the distance from its star. The scientists calculated the possibility by mapping Kepler-62f's orbital path with an existing computer model called HNBody. "We found there are multiple atmospheric compositions that allow it to be warm enough to have surface liquid water. This makes it a strong candidate for a habitable planet," said Aomawa Shields, lead researcher of the study.