Newfound planet habitable but humid

WASHINGTON – Astronomers believe they have found a second planet outside our solar system that seems to be in the right zone for life.

But it would feel like a steam bath: hot, sticky and beyond uncomfortable.

European astronomers announced the discovery Monday along with about 50 other planets outside our solar system at a conference in Moran, Wyo.

The most exciting of those planets is only the second to be confirmed as lying in what astronomers call the habitable zone, or the Goldilocks zone: not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to be present. Water is the key to a planet being able to support life, scientists say.

Only one of the past discoveries of such Goldilocks planets has held up. That was a planet found in 2007. And even this new one comes with an asterisk: The planet would need to have water and be a rocky, solid planet like Earth.

The new planet is about 3.6 times the mass of Earth. Temperatures there may range from 85 to 120 degrees with plenty of humidity.

“It’s going to be really muggy,” said study author Lisa Kaltenegger, an astronomer with the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Shorter and squatter life could conceivably take root there, she said. Such lifeforms would probably be closer to the ground than humans because gravity on this larger-than-Earth planet is about 1.4 times what we experience, she said.

The new planet, called HD85512b, closely circles a star about 35 light-years from Earth in the constellation Vela. Each light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.

A year there is 60 days. Its sun is about 1,800 degrees cooler than our sun, Kaltenegger said.