Team confirms a fifth potentially habitable planet around L 98-59, a red dwarf 35 light-years away, where conditions could allow liquid water to exist
https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2025/07/22/a-udem-team-confirms-a-fifth-potentially-habitable-planet-around-l-98-59-a-red-dwarf-35-l/
3 Comments
The “potentially habitable” is a bit of a stretch in my opinion.
I guess there is likely water, but it is still a planet with >2.8 times the mass of earth, so the gravity is a lot stronger than Earth’s gravity. Other readings suggest it may be covered with a deep ocean of water due to being about 30% water by mass.
It’s a fairly interesting discovery, but it is another planet more massive than Earth, so the actual chances of habitability is unknown. This also appears to be a non-transiting planet, so until we’re able to directly image it, scientists will be unable to determine its size and density.
Still, I believe this is the first confirmed exoplanet in the habitable zone in about a year. Projects to find them can take a while, and are typically focused around red dwarfs since they’re easier and faster to find. There aren’t many projects that focus on sunlike stars unfortunately, though KOBE is still ongoing, and released its first discovery earlier this year, so we should hear more results over the next couple years or so.
We’ll be an extinct species long before we develop the tech to colonize other planets.