Our solar system could have a ‘twin’ 130 light years away – with up to nine planets including ‘rocky’ planets like our own earth.
If the findings are proved HD10180’s solar system will have more planets than ours since Pluto has been demoted to a dwarf planet
The star system HD 10180 had five confirmed planets – and a new study has confirmed two more, with another two suspected. Most are liable to be ‘scorchingly’ hot.
Astronomer Mikko Tuomi re-analysed data taken of star HD 10180 with High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a high-precision camera mounted on a 3.6 meter telescope in Chile.
‘The data indicates that there are not only seven but likely as many as nine planets in the system,’ said Tuomi told SPACE.com. ‘The two new planets appear to have orbital periods of roughly 10 and 68 days and masses of 1.9 and 5.1 times that of Earth, which enables the classification of them as hot super-Earths, i.e., planets with likely scorchingly hot rocky surfaces.’
Other solar systems generally have four or less planets orbiting a star.