A rocky planet not much larger than Earth has been detected orbiting a star close to our own neighborhood in the Milky Way, and the European astronomers who found it say it lies within the star's "habitable zone," where life could exist -- possibly in oceans of water.The object is the smallest of all the 200 or more so-called exoplanets whose discovery around far-off stars in the past dozen years has sparked a burst of excitement worldwide among astronomers and astrobiologists.
Most of those planets are huge, hot, and appear to be primarily gas giants like our own Jupiter, but water has been widely detected in these distant solar systems, and many astronomers agree that rocky planets like this one might well hold abundant liquid water as the abodes of alien life.
The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by many U.S. astronomers.
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