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The Archers plotline, Lynda accused of bunting heist

tvJul 17, 202644320

Researchers led by Dr Collin Cherubim of Harvard have detected an atmosphere around LHS 1140 b, a rocky planet 48 light-years from Earth orbiting a red dwarf in its star's habitable zone. The team published their results in Science and called the finding the first atmosphere discovered on a rocky planet in the habitable zone of another star. The only gas identified so far is helium, which the authors say probably resides in the planet's upper atmosphere and on its own would not support life. Dr David Charbonneau of Harvard emphasized that the key advance is finding an Earth-like, rocky world outside our solar system that actually has an atmosphere. The paper notes other, more life-sustaining gases could exist deeper in the atmosphere and that confirming them will be important for assessing habitability. The discovery joins other recent exoplanet probes such as K2-18b and the TRAPPIST-1 system as targets that have produced mixed results and follow-up reanalyses, reinforcing the need for further observations of LHS 1140 b to search for additional gases.