What if There’s an Earth-Like Planet at One of Our Closest Stars?

Just over four light-years away, our Solar System’s closest neighboring stars can be found. There’s red dwarf Proxima Centauri, at a distance of 4.2 light-years; and, just a little farther, at 4.37 light-years, a binary system of Sun-like stars – Alpha Centauri AB.   We don’t yet know if there are any Earth-like worlds orbiting … Read more

An Earthlike planet may be orbiting in a dead star’s ‘habitable zone’

Planetary debris, including some objects the size of moons, may hint at a rocky exoplanet within the habitable zone of a stellar zombie, a new study suggests. The star in question is a white dwarf called WD1054–226, a cooling remnant of a star that exhausted all fuel at its core. If an exoplanet is confirmed … Read more

The 10 most Earth-like exoplanets

Scientists have found over 4,000 exoplanets since the first such world was confirmed orbiting a sunlike star in 1995, according to NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration page. More than half of these discoveries were made by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which launched in 2009 on a mission to determine how common Earth-like planets are throughout the Milky … Read more