SPACE: A Cold and Frozen Alter-Earth
Astronomers, using a technique called microlensing, have discovered a planet about the size of Earth that orbits about the same distance from its sun. The catch? The sun is a brown dwarf – a tiny body that not even all astrophysicists agree is really a star. As a result, OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb (we’ll just call it “oggie”) is a frozen world. ”This ‘iceball’ planet is the lowest-mass planet ever found through microlensing,” Yossi Shvartzvald, at NASA’s JPL in Pasadena said. Maybe it has great ski resorts?