11/01/2011 11:28
NASA discovers smallest planet outside our solar system
NASA has discovered the smallest planet ever seen beyond our solar system – a rocky world just 1.4 times larger than Earth – using its planet-hunting Kepler observatory.
The planet, called Kepler-10b, is also the first rocky alien planet to be confirmed by NASA's Kepler mission using data collected between May 2009 and early January 2010. But, while Kepler-10b is a rocky world, it is not located in the so-called habitable zone – a region in a planetary system where liquid water can potentially exist on the planet's surface.