Could a super-Earth called Hestia be better than planet Earth?

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Could a super-Earth called Hestia be better than planet Earth?

30 May 2026

You won’t find Hestia, a super-Earth planet, on any of the charts, for this is a body imagined by Kurzgesagt. But Hestia, on paper at least, is a super-Earth in more ways than one.

No polar regions are present, ditto continents, though there are a multitude of medium size island land masses. The planet also sports shallow oceans, and an atmosphere far denser than Earth.

Combined, these conditions make Hestia an ideal spawning ground for all manner of complex lifeforms, including, possibly, intelligent life.

This would-be super-Earth also orbits in the habitable zone of an orange-dwarf star. The Sun meanwhile is a yellow-dwarf. Proxima Centauri, the next nearest star to Earth, is a red-dwarf.

Orange-dwarfs represent — at face value at least — a happy balance between the two. They are usually highly stable, and boast long lifespans, up to seventy-billon years, compared to about ten billion for stars such as the Sun.

A planet particularly conducive to life, hosted by a stable, long-lived star, increases the likelihood of intelligent life coming into being. Red dwarfs also have long lives, upwards of one trillion years, but that doesn’t always make them the ideal host for potentially life bearing planets.

Hestia also comes with four moons. Imagine a night sky adorned by not one, but four moons? What more could anyone want in a planet?

While such a place might make for an ideal life-friendly environment, it probably wouldn’t be suitable for humans. The surface gravity of a super-Earth can be up to three time that experienced on Earth. We might be able to adapt that sort of force, but it would be heavy going.

Multiple moons might also pose problems, depending on their proximity. If they are too close, the host planet may see more boisterous ocean tides, and increased seismic and volcanic activity.

Then there’s the matter of Hestia’s thirty-six hour day, something that might take some getting used to. But, if we’re trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, planets like Hestia, orbiting in the habitable zones of orange-dwarf stars, are what we should looking out for.

5000 exoplanets pinpointed and given a sound signature

23 August 2022

Prior to 1992 exoplanets — being planets orbiting stars other than the Sun — were unheard of. While scientists believed they existed, thirty years ago none had been found. Today though exoplanets are the rule rather than the exception with over five thousand such bodies having been identified so far.

And with an estimated one-hundred-thousand-million stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, it is likely many, many, more exoplanets will come to light. This nifty animation and sonification produced by NASA pinpoints the location of stars hosting exoplanets, while a pitch or chime conveys other information about the planet.

This animation and sonification tracks humanity’s discovery of the planets beyond our solar system over time. Turning NASA data into sounds allows users to hear the pace of discovery, with additional information conveyed by the notes themselves. As each exoplanet is discovered, a circle appears at its position in the sky. The size of the circle indicates the relative size of the planet’s orbit and the color indicates which planet detection method was used to discover it. The music is created by playing a note for each newly discovered world. The pitch of the note indicates the relative orbital period of the planet. Planets that take a longer time to orbit their stars are heard as lower notes, while planets that orbit more quickly are heard as higher notes.

The question now is how many exoplanets are capable of supporting life (as we know it), and is life present on any of these bodies.