A possible rocky exoplanet referred to as a 'cold Earth' that could orbit on the outer edge of the habitable zone has been found around a star 146 light-years away.
Known as HD 137010b, the exoplanet is considered at this stage to be a candidate world, meaning that its existence has yet to be confirmed. The star is a K-type dwarf, meaning it is a little smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun, and HD 137010b would receive just 29% of the heat and light that Earth does from our sun. Based on our best estimates of the size of its star, the planet likely has a diameter just 1.06 times that of Earth, and orbits once every 355 days, although there's a huge amount of uncertainty in that estimation. This imprecision means that exactly what conditions are like on the planet's surface remain open to debate.
