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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Exoplanet discovered around neighbouring star [bbc.com]

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 [nature.com] [DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0677-y] [DX [doi.org]], Guillem Anglada Escudé and colleagues say this newly discovered world has a mass 3.2 times bigger than the Earth's.

Barnard's Star [wikipedia.org].

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