From what the planet itself is, to whether it came be a place we live on in the future, join us as we explore the finding of TOI 700 D! So, let's just jump right in, shall we?
"NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star’s habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface. Scientists confirmed the find, called TOI 700 d, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and have modeled the planet’s potential environments to help inform future observations."
I know I just unloaded a massive amount of information on you, so let's just break it down step by step. The TESS is a satellite that is also a massive telescope, it's job is to find planets that could be life-filled, but also find ones of a certain size. You know what? Here's the NASA description of it:
"The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a NASA-sponsored Astrophysics Explorer-class mission that is performing an all-sky survey to search for planets transiting nearby stars. The primary goal of TESS is to discover planets smaller than Neptune that transit stars bright enough to enable follow-up spectroscopic observations that can provide planet masses and atmospheric compositions."
So yeah, the TESS is supposed to find planets that we can study and hopefully determine whether they are able to support life, or more importantly, support us. The discovery of TOI 700 D is VERY important because it's literally the first planet it has found (and trust me there are plenty of planets it's found so far) that fits the needs of life itself! Or at least, is the most like Earth in the grand sense of things. So you can imagine why a lot of scientists are interested in learning more and more about this planet as a whole.
Now if you don't recall what "habitable zone" means, it's about distance from the sun, or more specifically, "the orbital region around a star in which an Earth-like planet can possess liquid water on its surface and possibly support life."
Think about it in terms of our own solar system. The Earth is within the habitable zone of our sun, thus we're able to live, have water, have an atmosphere that allows us to be hot and cold without being on either extreme, and so on and so forth. But, if you look at Venus, because of its proximity to the sun, it's a LOT hotter, and thus it suffers from the Greenhouse Effect, where gasses fill up its atmosphere to such a degree that it's really hot on the surface. So hot that it melts metals. Meanwhile, on Mars, it's so far away from the sun that it's usually REALLY cold, so cold that no life can survive there (that we know of...) and the water that is there is frozen in ice at the polar caps.
That habitable zone is what we define as the "must be there" zone in terms of planets we'd like to try and colonize, or even just expect life to be on. Because if it's not in that zone, it usually is an ice world, a storm world, a gas planet, or something in between. Heck, there are even planets within the habitable zone of a star that don't always meet the requirements of life. But we still look in that zone because it's the best chance of finding things there. And since TOI 700 D is in that zone AND is Earth-sized, it might just be something special.
Emphasis on MIGHT, because as you all have hopefully learned over the course of your lives...you can't judge a book by its cover. And in this case, you can't judge a planet because it looks like it might be an Earth-like planet, or might be the same size as Earth. Because in the planet-finding race, it's not just the planet you need to worry about, it's the sun too.
After all, our yellow dwarf star is a big reason why we exist right now. It's the right type of star to support life as a whole. It gives us the right amount of sunlight, heat, and tether in regards to our orbit to allow us to live. For TOI 700 D? It doesn't technically have that. It is in the habitable zone, but there are a few things different from its star than ours.
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Primary among the differences of these stars is that the star near TOI 700 D is a "red dwarf star". Which if you don't know is the smallest star type in the Milky Way galaxy. But in a twist, it's also the one that is the most popular in terms of numbers in the galaxy. So why don't we see more of them? Because they're the type of star to not emit so much light that you can see them across the galaxy. So if you look up at the night sky, you're not going to see any red dwarf stars.
But there's a catch in that, while they don't emit as much light or heat as our own sun, they're most stable kind of star in our galaxy. Meaning that radiation bursts, solar flares, and more don't happen on the star.
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