Astronomers Get First Peek at Atmosphere of a "Super-Earth" Exoplanet

Someday in the coming years, if astronomers finally succeed in locating a virtual Earth twin outside the solar system--a tiny dot of a world at a temperate, life-enabling distance from a sunlike star--the achievement will hardly be cause for resting on observational laurels. Instead another race will begin: to characterize the planet and its atmosphere and to determine if the world is truly habitable or, tantalizingly, if it is already inhabited by some extraterrestrial life-form. [More]

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