Astronomers discover a 'super-Earth' exoplanet that might be habitable

Super earth LHS 1140.
(Image credit: M. Weiss/CfA/courtesy eso.org)

Just months after spotting seven Earth-sized exoplanets that could support life, scientists have discovered another potentially habitable planet.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers unveiled LHS 1140b, a "super-Earth" exoplanet that has a mass nearly seven times that of Earth and may offer the "best opportunity ever to find alien life," Wired reported. "We could hardly hope for a better target to perform one of the biggest quests in science: searching for evidence of life beyond Earth," said Jason Dittmann at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

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