Astronomers say they have found the first planet beyond our solar system that has just the right size and locale to sustain life as we know it, only 20 light-years from Earth.
MSNBC: The discovery, published online in The Astrophysical Journal, is the result of 11 years of observations at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Now they say there may well be many more planets out there like this one.
”Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet,” Steven Vogt, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said in a news release.
”The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common.”
Read complete article at MSNBC
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Go to NASA Exoplanet Count