Astronomers discover 'super-earth' that's bigger than our planet but smaller than Neptune

An international team of astronomers claim to have discovered a 'super-Earth' that's bigger than our own blue planet but smaller than Neptune.

A new paper, published in the journal, Science has revealed that astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have discovered a planet twice the size of Earth.

"We found a 'super-Earth' - meaning it's bigger than our home planet but smaller than Neptune - in a place where only planets thousands or hundreds of times more massive than Earth were found before," said lead author Weicheng Zang.

According to the CfA, the discovery of the planet - which is orbiting a star even farther out than Saturn orbits the sun - is hugely important because it provides information about planets across the Milky Way.

"This study used microlensing, an effect where light from distant objects is amplified by an intervening body such as a planet," CfA explain.

"Microlensing is particularly effective at finding planets at large distances – approximately between the orbits of Earth and Saturn – from their host stars.

"The largest study of its kind, this work has about three times more planets and includes planets that are about eight times smaller than previous samples of planets found using the microlensing technique."

The super-Earth is twice the size of our blue planet (Getty Stock Photo)

While conducting their research, the team used data from the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet).

"The current data provided a hint of how cold planets form," said Professor Shude Mao of Tsinghua University and Westlake University in China.

"In the next few years, the sample will be a factor of four larger, and thus we can constrain how these planets form and evolve even more stringently with KMTNet data."

Meanwhile, co-author Jennifer Yee, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, explained that the work suggests that super-Earths exist in other areas of the galaxy.

"This measurement of the planet population from planets somewhat larger than Earth all the way to the size of Jupiter and beyond shows us that planets, and especially super-Earths, in orbits outside the Earth's orbit are abundant in the Galaxy," she explained.

There's been a series of exciting discoveries recently, including NASA's James Webb telescope uncovering more details about a planet known as K2-18b that was first discovered back in 2015.

The James Webb telescope has recently made an exciting discovery (Getty Stock Photo)

Most recently, dimethyl sulfide (DMS) has been found in K2-18b's atmosphere.

“In layman's terms, it's a gas that appears in our atmosphere," explained Dr Michael Steinke of the University of Essex.

"As far as we are aware it's produced by marine biology, by marine life, but there are also some terrestrial plants that produce it.

"There has been lots of research on the production of dimethyl sulfide because it's involved as a climate cooling gas in our atmosphere.

"So wherever there's a lot of this gas, dimethyl sulfide, in the atmosphere, then there are more clouds being formed and cloud shade the plane, they cool the planet so that's good for keeping us at a liveable temperature on this planet."