Exoplanet discovered around neighbouring star
Astronomers have discovered a planet around one of the closest stars to our Sun.
Nearby planets like this are likely to be prime targets in the search for signatures of life, using the next generation of telescopes.
The planet's mass is thought to be more than three times that of our own, placing it in a category of world know as "super-Earths".
It orbits Barnard's star, which sits "just" six light-years away.
Writing in the journal Nature [DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0677-y] [DX], Guillem Anglada Escudé and colleagues say this newly discovered world has a mass 3.2 times bigger than the Earth's.
Also at phys.org.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday November 14 2018, @11:12PM
That would be nice. I'm on board.
This is really close too*, if we're ever going to send someone off to have a look, Barnard's Star might be an option.
Not that I expect that to happen in my lifetime.
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* for some values of close.