New Earth Found

Finally, after all that searching, astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet yet. They say the planet could support water and most importantly, life! From CNN:

"This one is the first one that is at the same time probably rocky, with water, and in a zone close to the star where the water could exist in liquid form," said Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, who led the study.

"We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid."

Most of the 200 or so planets that have been spotted outside this solar system have been gas giants like Jupiter. But this one is small.

"Its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky, like our Earth, or covered with oceans," Udry said in a telephone interview.

But those of you thinking of migrating to this new planet may be disappointed to know that it is located 20.5 light-years away. 1 light year is equivalent to 9,460,730,472,580.8 km. Do the math. Yup, it's so far, far away.