Super-earths is catchy but really just refers to very large planets that aren’t quite massive enough to be ‘ice giant’ status. New research suggest that many of these could host life, consequently expanding the search-net of life in the cosmos.

Now, scientists led by Marit Mol Lous, a PhD student studying exoplanets at the University of Zürich, have presented new evidence that so-called “cold Super-Earths” that orbit their stars at more than twice the distance between Earth and the Sun, “can maintain temperate surface conditions” for up to give to eight billion years, a timespan that “suggests that the concept of planetary habitability should be revisited and made more inclusive,” according to a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy.

The implications of the study are exciting, but Mol Lous and her colleagues cautioned that it will take more research, and hopefully direct observations, to back up these initial findings.

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