LOS ANGELES — By taking a fresh look at old data, an
international team of astronomers has discovered a possible
super-Earth planet relatively nearby that could potentially hold
liquid water, scientists announced last week. The research,
released by the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, used a novel
technique to analyze previous measurements of a nearby star. The
paper drew some praise even as other experts in the field
expressed caution about the results. The finding adds three
planet candidates around the dwarf star HD 40307, about 42
light-years away. Combined with three others that were
discovered in 2008, they bring the total to six. Five are
clustered close to the star, nearer than Mercury's orbit around
the sun. But one of the three new finds lies far enough away to
be in what's known as the habitable zone, where a planet could
support liquid water — and perhaps life. That candidate planet,
dubbed HD 40307g, has seven times the mass of Earth, the
scientists reported. “It's likely that it's sufficient i