New Super-Earth Found Orbiting Distant Star; Liquid Water Possible in Habitable Zone of Sun - ABC News

Pack your bags. But leave the bottled water behind; you might not need it.

Scientists have found a planet orbiting another star -- 22 light-years away -- and of all the hundreds of so-called exoplanets so far discovered, this one is, lead researcher Guillem Anglada-Escude said, "the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it."

The planet is labeled GJ 667Cc, found in the constellation Scorpio, and it would seem at first to be a very alien world. It is about five times more massive than Earth. It orbits its host star in only 28 of our days.

But that star is smaller and dimmer than our sun, and most of the light it emits is infrared. Anglada-Escude says it would provide just the right amount of warmth for the planet to be temperate like ours.

"Other proposed candidates [to be watery worlds] would require very special conditions to support liquid water," Anglada-Escude said in an email to ABC News.

The temperature, he said, is probably right regardless of the planet's atmosphere or cloud cover: "This one lies within the zone where no further assumptions (or fine tuning) are required."