NASA discovers ‘Super Earth’ sending mysterious message 154 light years away
NASA has found a ‘Super Earth’ that is sending a mysterious message 154 light years away.
The exoplanet is two and a half times heavier than our planet, with oceans on one side and scorched on the other.
Known as TOI-1846 b, the super Earth is 154 light years away located in the northern constellation Lyra and is puzzling scientists.
This is due to the fact that it is emitting a flickering light, which was recorded by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite back in March of this year.
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A team of researchers studying the planet published a paper where they explained that the ‘super-Earth planet [is] orbiting the M dwarf star TOI-1846’.
According to the team, the planet is in the ‘radius gap’, meaning that it isn’t quite a rocky planet but isn’t a gas giant either.
It’s likely that TOI-1846 b has a thin atmosphere with a thick layer of ice under the ground and is covered in oceans.
On the surface, the temperature would be around 295°C (563°F) as only one side of the planet is always facing its sun.
Abderahmane Soubkiou, who is the lead researcher at Oukaimeden Observatory in Morocco, said: “We have validated TOI-1846 b using TESS and multicolour ground-based photometric data, high-resolution imaging, and spectroscopic observations.”
There is a small chance that there could be life on the planet but it is also possible that there are other planets orbiting around the red dwarf which might be more likely to be hosting life.
In order to find out if there is any life in exoplanets in that solar system, experts will need to conduct radial velocity (RV) tests using a method known as transit timing which has already been used to study over 630 exoplanets.
Scientists have long been searching for the existence of exoplanets orbiting around a sun like the planets in our solar system but have found that they are difficult to spot.
As of June 2025, there are 5,926 confirmed exoplanets in 4,419 planetary systems, with 996 systems having more than one planet.
On the NASA website, it said: “Remarkably, the first exoplanets were just discovered in the 1990s. We live in an extraordinary time where in the span of a single generation, the centuries-old question ‘are there planets orbiting other stars?’ has been answered with a resounding ‘yes!’”
There are thousands of other potential exoplanet detections that ‘require further observations in order to say for sure whether or not the exoplanet is real’.