New Planet discovered - with Earth like temperatures

Scientists have discovered a new planet outside the Solar system. For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for ''life in the universe.''

The planet is of optimum size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles (193 trillion km) away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a ''red dwarf,'' is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

Though European astronomers haven't directly seen the planet, orbiting a red dwarf star called Gliese 581, but measurements of the star suggest that a planet not much larger than the Earth is pulling on it, the researchers say in a letter to the editor of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

image courtesy: AP

It is estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius (32 to 104 degrees F), and water would thus be liquid.

Its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky, like our Earth, or covered with oceans.