(LA TIMES) Deborah Newborn, November 12, 2015 — A Small planet, just a bit bigger than Earth, has been spotted in our stellar neighborhood, just 39 light-years away.

Known as GJ 1132b, it is the closest rocky exoplanet to have ever been found, and astronomers say it could provide our most in-depth look yet at an alien world not so different than our own.

Drake Deming, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, was so excited about the findings, published this week in Nature, that he described the new world as “arguably the most important planet ever found outside the solar system” in an accompanying News and Views article.

Source: Scientists think they just found the most important planet outside our solar system – LA Times