The planet lies in what they describe as a ‘habitable zone’, neither too near its sun to dry out or too far away which freezes it.

And the discovery could help answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe, which has been plagued astronomers and alien fanatics for years.

Scientists found the planet, Gliese 667Cc, orbiting around a red dwarf star, 22 light years away from the earth.

via Astronomers find new planet capable of supporting life – Telegraph.

Sensational stories like this always crack me up. This isn’t news. It isn’t even new. All this story is really saying is that the planet orbiting Gliese that was previously suspected strongly of orbiting in the “Goldilocks zone” around the red dwarf star is now confirmed to be smack in the middle of the zone.

I wish these mouth-breathing, hyperventilating “reporters” would just report the facts. The facts here are that we’ve got strong evidence for the existence of a rocky planet orbiting around a red dwarf star at a distance where it would receive a comparable amount of heat and light from its star as the earth does from the sun.

That’s all we really know. Everything else is speculation. It may have a super-dense atmosphere like Venus and a runaway greenhouse effect, or it may have no atmosphere. It may have perfect temperatures but no water. Nobody knows.

It is reasonable to suppose that there could be water there though, since water is pretty common in our own solar system and current solar system formation theories would suggest that water is pretty common in most third or fourth generation star systems. The fact that there is a rocky planet there is a good indication though that the star was formed from a similar dust cloud as the earth.

Heck, it may have formed from the very same dust cloud as earth. It’s pretty dang close. 22 light years is kissing cousin distance.