Out of This World

It sounds like the premises for a sci-fi flick: Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics just discovered a rocky distant “mega-earth” that weighs 17 times more than our planet, and that shows plausible implications for life. Given the moniker, Kepler-10c, this newly discovered planet is 560 light years from earth, circles a sun-like star every 45 days, and is approximately 11 billion years old (which resets our idea on the age of the universe). Rocky planets like this offer the best conditions for life. Given the age of this planet, scientists now know they shouldn’t count out old stars when they’re looking for signs of life. So, is there something else out there? Let the hypothesizing begin!

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