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The New York Times: Search Finds Far-Off Planet Akin to Earth

The New York Times Search Finds Far-Off Planet Akin to Earth
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"Astronomers say that by virtue of the ceaseless shifting of the billions of stars in the Milky Way and a trick of Einsteinian physics, they have briefly glimpsed the most Earth-like planet yet to be discovered outside the solar system. It is a ball of rock and ice only about 5.5 times as massive as Earth, smaller than any of the 160 previously discovered exoplanets, and is orbiting a dim reddish star 21,000 light-years from here."

"As Dr. Beaulieu explained in an e-mail message, it would have been much easier to see a giant gaseous type of planet. The long odds against detecting so small a planet as the new one argues for its commonness."

The Independent Discovery of Earth-like planet brings hope of finding alien life
""This has huge implications for finding life," said Stephen Kane of the University of Florida, one of the 73 astronomers from the 32 institutions around the world involved in the study, published today in the journal Nature. "The good thing about this is it shows that planets this size might be quite common in habitable zones," Dr Kane said."

"Bohdan Paczynski at Princeton University said: "We may predict with reasonable probability that gravitational microlensing will discover planets with masses like that of Earth at a similar distance from their stars and with comparable surface temperatures.""

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The New York Times: Search Finds Far-Off Planet Akin to Earth

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