Scientists at the European Southern Observatory have estimated there could be billions of ‘Super-Earths’ orbiting dim stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Super-Earths are planets that exist outside our solar system with a mass up to 10 times that of our own planet.

The term ‘Super-Earth’ doesn’t necessarily indicate that the planet is rocky like ours, it’s only a reference to the mass of the planet. Most of these Super-Earths would orbit around red dwarf stars which are by far the most prevalent type of star in the galaxy, it is estimated that there around 160 billion of them in the Milky Way.

Red dwarfs are faint stars with less than 50% the mass of our own sun, as a result they emit far less energy. In order for planets to be in the habitable zone they would have to orbit extremely closely to their host star. It is not yet known if life would be able to flourish on a planet so close to a star, it would be subject to a huge amount x-ray and ultraviolet radiation emitted by the star.

The ESO based its estimate after observing 102 red dwarfs using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher spectrograph or HARPs for short. It found that out of the 109 stars observed 9 of them were orbited by Super-Earths.

Astronomers at the ESO believe they will be able to detect life on any habitable zone Super-Earths if they are lucky enough observe a transit, this is when a planet passes between its host star and Earth. They would then be able to analyse the light passing through the planets atmosphere allowing them to deduce the chemical composition of its atmosphere.

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