They didn’t use a space telescope, or a huge ground-based scope
like the Keck or the Gemini, or even the sort of backyard
telescope some planet hunters rely on to gather evidence of
alien worlds. Instead, a team of European and American
astronomers started with a clever new analytical technique,
applied it to a set of existing observations archived by the
European Southern Observatory and made what could be the biggest
planet discovery since — well, since the announcement of a world
in the nearby Alpha Centauri star system three weeks ago. The
fact that big planetary discoveries are occurring so close
together is a measure of how fast the exoplanet field has
exploded in recent years. And the announcement a few weeks back
was an exciting one indeed. That new planet orbits a star close
to Earth, and it’s Earthlike in size as well. Its surface is
probably molten lava — which pretty much rules it out as a
candidate for life — and that’s where the even more recently
discovered planet wins out. Known as HD 40307g,