Astronomers say they have found the clearest sign yet of an atmosphere surrounding LHS 1140 b, a super-Earth located in its star’s habitable zone. The key evidence is helium seen escaping from the planet, a finding that suggests this rocky world has managed to hold onto an atmosphere over extremely long timescales.
The discovery is notable because planets in the habitable zone are of special interest to scientists studying whether distant worlds could support conditions similar to those on Earth. In this case, the new detection points to a planet that is not only rocky, but also appears to have retained a substantial gaseous envelope for billions of years.
Researchers describe the helium signal as the strongest evidence so far that a rocky exoplanet in the habitable zone has an atmosphere. That makes LHS 1140 b an important target for future observations aimed at understanding what its atmosphere is made of and how stable it has remained over time.
The result adds to the growing effort to identify potentially Earth-like planets beyond the solar system, but it also highlights how difficult those worlds are to study. Even so, the new evidence around LHS 1140 b marks a major step in the search for habitable environments on rocky planets orbiting other stars.
