New Exoplanet Is Best Yet Candidate For Supporting Life

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday February 2, 2012 @05:31PM from the welcome-to-the-neighborhood dept.

First time accepted submitter uigrad_2000 writes "With all the new exoplanets discovered recently with Kepler, it seemed a sure thing that the first exoplanet in the habitable zone of a star would be found soon. The irony is that Kepler was not involved. GJ 667Cc is at least 4.5 times as massive as Earth, and lies in the habitable region of its host star, reports Scientific American. It was discovered by comparing public data from the ESO to recent observations from Hawaii and Chile. As opposed to the stars Kepler is watching, this is only 22 light-years away, making it even more interesting."

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Re:22 light years by butalearner · 2012-02-03 01:21 · Score: 5, Informative

I would not be so worried about Doppler shifted radiation. I would be more worried about the 3 foot tall super strong midgets who would live on a planet with 4.5x our gravity. They would undoubtedly be able to break a human man in half with little effort.
Actually, the planet's radius is probably going to be quite a bit larger than our own, since (reportedly) there are fewer heavy metals in that system. If the radius is 2.1x Earth's radius with 4.5x the mass, the gravity would be the same as Earth.