A SMALL planet about seven times as massive as the Earth has been spotted circling a nearby star. It is the most Earth-like world yet to be discovered.
“For the first time, we are beginning to find our planetary kin among the stars,” says Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley, whose team announced the discovery of the planet at a news conference in Arlington, Virginia, on Monday.
Over the past decade, astronomers have discovered around 150 extrasolar planets circling ordinary stars like the sun. The vast majority of the planets have been gas giants larger than Jupiter,…
