A new study has confirmed that planets the same size as Earth could support life "10 times further away" from stars than previously believed, according to BBC News.
Researchers from the University of Aberdeen, which also included academics from the University of St. Andrews, said recently that cold planets previously though uninhabitable could support life underneath the surface.
The team's paper was published in Planetary and Space Science.
"A planet needs to be not too close to its sun but also not too far away for liquid water to persist, rather than boiling or freezing, on the surface," said PhD student Sean McMahon in a statement, according to BBC News. "But that theory fails to take into account life that can exist beneath a planet's surface."
The researchers were able to create a computer model that estimated the temperature underneath the surface of a planet of a specific size and distance away from its star, according to the study.
McMahon said that the "deepest known life" on planet Earth is approximately 5.3km below the surface, but there could be life 10km deep in certain places that have yet to be drilled.
The computer model allowed the team to discover that the habitable zone for an Earth-like planet orbiting a sun is approximately three times larger when including the top five km below the planet surface, according to BBC News.
"The results suggest life may occur much more commonly deep within planets and moons than on their surfaces," said McMahon. "This means it might be worth looking for signs of life outside conventional habitable zones. "I hope people will study the ways in which life below the surface might reveal itself.
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