Nearest star from the sun has earth like planet.

[Anomalocaris]

Well, not quite. Alpha centauri, nearest star system to earth at merely 4.2 light years away, has an earth massed planet in its orbit. But the planet orbits so close to the star it's surface would melt lead. So a planet with bulk property like the earth, but not the surface condition we would find hospitable.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Neares...t_999.html

[popeyespappy]

Very cool! The closest place there could be an exoplanet and there one sits.

[Darkstar]

What about extremophiles?
Thermophile
Not that any earthly species could do it...

A thermophile is an organism — a type of extremophile — that thrives at relatively high temperatures, between 45 and 122 °C (113 and 252 °F).

But the planet orbits so close to the star it's surface would melt lead.

Melting point of lead: 621.5° F (327.5° C)
...yeah.

[Polaris]

Are you aware that there are three stars in that solar system?

[popeyespappy]

Yes.

Are you suggesting a center of mass orbit? If so that's not what Chuck's article said.

[Welsh cake]

Bloody hell, it took three years of observations to confirm Earth's nearest known exoplanet. Now that must have been a difficult analysis.

[Anomalocaris]

Bloody hell, it took three years of observations to confirm Earth's nearest known exoplanet. Now that must have been a difficult analysis.

Basically, planets that are big, massive and orbits closer to its star are easier to detect. This planet orbits comparatively close to its star, but is quite small, and light weight, in comparsion to what we've been able to detect around other stars. It would not have been one of the easier ones to detect.

Planets that are smaller or further out can be extremely difficult to detect. So difficult that we can't even rule out that there might be undetected, earth sized planets out in and beyond the Keiper belt orbiting our own sun. We don't think there are, but we our available observation is not sufficient to rule that out.

[Welsh cake]

Bloody hell, it took three years of observations to confirm Earth's nearest known exoplanet. Now that must have been a difficult analysis.

Basically, planets that are big, massive and orbits closer to its star are easier to detect. This planet orbits comparatively close to its star, but is quite small, and light weight, in comparsion to what we've been able to detect around other stars. It would not have been one of the easier ones to detect.

Planets that are smaller or further out can be extremely difficult to detect. So difficult that we can't even rule out that there might be undetected, earth sized planets out in and beyond the Keiper belt orbiting our own sun. We don't think there are, but we our available observation is not sufficient to rule that out.

Its plausible then that we haven't discovered any actual exoplanets, just really big brown dwarfs.

The cosmos must have planets orbiting stars, and rogue planets, in their abundance...

[Jackalope]

Its plausible then that we haven't discovered any actual exoplanets, just really big brown dwarfs.

Very few discovered explanets have an upper constraint on mass that fits models of brown dwarfs.

The cosmos must have planets orbiting stars, and rogue planets, in their abundance...

I don't recall where I read it, but it's been estimated that there could be hundreds of billions of rogue planets in the Milky Way alone.

When a planetary-sized object passes in front of a background star, its gravitational field causes a momentary increase in the visible brightness of the background star. This is known as microlensing. Astrophysicist Takahiro Sumi of Osaka University in Japan and colleagues, who form the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) collaborations, carried out a study of microlensing which they published in 2011. They observed 50 million stars in our galaxy using the 1.8 meter MOA-II telescope at New Zealand's Mount John Observatory and the 1.3 meter Warsaw University Telescope at Chile's Las Campanas Observatory. They found 474 incidents of microlensing, just 10 of which were brief enough to be planets of around Jupiter's size with no associated star in the immediate vicinity. The researchers estimated from their observations that there are nearly two free-floaters for every star in our galaxy.[6][7][8] Other estimations suggest a much larger number, up to 100,000 times more free-floating planets than stars in our Milky Way. [9]

[Anomalocaris]

Some of the exoplanets we've found are too small and too dense to be anything but rocky planets. Also, the hypothetical distinction between small brown dwarves and big planets seems to have not received much support. ie planets grade into brown dwarves without any clear objective demarcation. Big planets are just small brown dwarves.

---

The cosmos must have planets orbiting stars, and rogue planets, in their abundance...

Absolutely. There are certainly far more planets in just this galaxy alone than there are neurons in all the creationist brains in this universe put together.