Scientists have always been searching for elusive habitable Earth-like exoplanets and there's apparently one "habitable" planet scientists previously ignored due to inadequate data analysis.

This Earth-like exoplanet called GJ 581d was first spotted in 2009 in the star system Gliese 581 estimated just 20 light years away from our planet.

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This planet was detected using the HIRES spectrometer of the Keck I telescope that measured its Doppler shift, or the wavelength of light emitted by a star caused by an orbiting planet when it passes in front of that star.

There were already initial observations that indicated GJ 581d has a surface temperature cool enough for water to exist on its surface and possibly support microbial life. Unfortunately, scientists didn't think this planet was habitable enough and considered this discovery just "noise" found in astronomical data sets and not due to the presence of a habitable world.

Now, researchers from the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the University of Hertfordshire believe GJ 581d is truly a habitable exoplanet and that scientists were actually right in supposing it was when they first discovered GJ 581d.

According to lead researcher Guillem Anglada-Escudé, the existence of GJ 581d will always be significant since it's the first planet found in the "Goldilocks Zone" or the habitable zone in another star system and has been the benchmark case for the Doppler method.

The statistical technique used by scientists during a 2014 research created a discrepancy, especially for detecting smaller planets. The Doppler technique has been effective for larger planets in the past since their effect on their host star is too strong to ignore.

Since GJ 581 is a relatively small planet, it has been challenging for researchers to find the smallest or faintest planet signals that are too close or within the stellar noise caused by its host star's interaction and variability.

The QMUL team used a more accurate model with existing data and reclassified GJ 581d as one of the most probable existing exoplanets similar to ours outside the solar system.

This study was published in the journal, Science.

TagsStudy: First Ever Habitable Earth-like Exoplanet Found Might Exist After All, gliese 581, habitable exoplanets, earth-like planets, earth like habitable planet found discovered