The latest exoplanet to be discovered is the M-dwarf GJ 1214b, a watery planet barely 40 light years from earth. John Trimmer in Ars:
…the latest discovery comes from some pretty mundane hardware—a collection of 40cm telescopes—and has some very compelling properties: a super earth that’s likely to harbor liquid water, and orbits a star that’s close enough to allow current observatories to image its atmosphere.
How special is earth compared to a super earth far away?
Depending on how reflective the planet’s atmosphere is, it may have temperatures as high as 555K, or as low as 393K—the latter figure is only 20°C above the boiling point of water. That’s far and away the coolest planet we’ve yet spotted, and a far cry from the only other super earth we know much about, which is hot enough that its atmosphere probably contains vaporized titanium oxides.
Ouch.
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