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This is really thrilling. A new planet-detecting system called HARPS has just found a planet close to Earth’s mass and temperature, and it’s only 20.1 light years away. That’s right next door in astronomical terms. It’s now the prime candidate for a mission to search for extraterrestrial life. What a setting it must be. It orbits so close to its red dwarf sun that its year is 13 of our days.
“As soon as you find a planet at the right distance [from its star] such that liquid water might exist, then you’re saying this is the kind of environment in which one might start looking for life.”
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