An international scientific team led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has discovered the presence of two planets with Earth-like masses in orbit around the star GJ 1002, a red dwarf not far from the Solar System. Both planets are in the habitability zone of the star “Nature seems bent on showing us that Earth-like planets are very common. With these two we now know 7 in planetary systems quite near to the Sun” explains Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, an IAC researcher, who is the first author of the study accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The

The research, carried out by an international group incuding the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias(IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL) also show that the binary system has a third star orbiting it , and which could have originated from close to the centre of the Milky Way. While the Earth takes 365 days to complete its orbit round the Sun, the star which orbits the new found pulsar ZTF J1406+1222 does it in 62 minutes, which makes it a neutron star in a binary system termed a “black widow”, with the shortest period measured until now. These data were obtained using the ultra-high