Researchers have discovered a new Earth-like planet 200 light-years away that could change the way distant exoplanets are studied.

According to BBC News, research teams from the University of Aberdeen and the University of St. Andrews said planets deemed uninhabitable may just be hiding beneath a thick atmosphere. Beneath the gas may be a rocky planet that can sustain life.

The new exoplanet also orbits it host star at a distance previously believed much too far to support life.

"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," Sean McMahon, an Aberdeen PhD student, told BBC News. "But that theory fails to take into account life that can exist beneath a planet's surface."

The researchers developed a model that takes atmosphere, distance from host star and planet size to determine the temperature on the surface. McMahon said the surface temperature needs to be specific, not too hot and not too cold, but just enough for water and life to exist.

"The deepest known life on Earth is 5.3km below the surface, but there may well be life even 10km deep in places on Earth that haven't yet been drilled," he said. "Using our computer model we discovered that the habitable zone for an Earth-like planet orbiting a sun-like star is about three times bigger if we include the top five kilometers below the planet surface."

The team's model suggests that water in liquid form, and therefore life, can exist five km below the Earth's surface even if it was "three times further away from the sun than it is just now."

Considering the model, this would make host stars' habitable zones wider than previously believed.

"This means it might be worth looking for signs of life outside conventional habitable zones," McMahon told BBC News. "I hope people will study the ways in which life below the surface might reveal itself.

"Earth might even be unusual in having life on the surface."