Another earth-like planet found

Less than only 12 light-years away a new potentially habitable earth-like planet was found, circling the sun-like Tau Ceti star.

Tau Ceti is a star in the constellation Cetus that is very similar to the Sun but with only about 78% of the Sun's mass. Astronomers have detected 5 possible planets circling the Tau Ceti and one of them seems to be orbiting the start in the so called habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet.

The newly found planet has a mass of 4.3 that of Earth, which makes it the smallest potentially habitable planet discovered so far. The Tau Ceti star is visible with the naked eye, and being mere 12 light-years away from Earth we can say it's practically in our back yard in the great space scheme of things. With today's technology it would still take us more then 100,000 years to reach it.

In the following video you can see other possibly habitable "near-by" planets in our Milky Way galaxy.



Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire in England said it's not very likely for the newly found Earth-like world to have a rocky surface, it could as well be a "water world" but at this point we can only guess. In case the new planets around Tau Ceti get an official confirmation they are still not the closest planets to Earth outside of our solar system. The closest so call exoplanet is still Alpha Centauri Bb, a unpleasantly hot and rocky planet only 4.3 light-years away in our closest star system Alpha Centauri.