Planets, Earth-like | featured news

Researchers find that 6% of red dwarf stars host habitable, Earth-sized planets - meaning the closest may be just 13 light-years away.

Scientists have spent years hunting for Earth-like planets orbiting stars elsewhere in the galaxy. Now they have found one that's a relative stone's-throw away. The so-called exoplanet — a planet beyond our solar system — is circling Alpha Centauri B, just 4.37 light-years from Earth. A mere 3.7 million miles from the star's surface, it is far too hot to support life. But there's a chance that another planetary sibling may reside in the system's so-called habitable zone, where liquid water could exist, scientists say.

The most Earth-like planet ever discovered is circling a star 600 light years away, a key finding in an ongoing quest to learn if life exists beyond Earth, scientists said on Monday. "We are homing in on the true Earth-sized, habitable planets," said San Jose State University astronomer Natalie Batalha, deputy science team lead for NASA's Kepler Space Telescope that discovered the star.