That is a bold statement.

Astronomers and astronomy fans alike are going crazy over a new planetary discovery.  Apparently this exoplanet is only 39 light years away and is being called GJ 1132b.  It is close enough to study in much further detail and they are saying it is extremely similar to Venus.

Here is a bit more background on why this planet is particularly exciting.  It is rarer than one might imagine!

One of the dire frustrations of studying planets around other stars (and, really, any astronomical object) is their distance from Earth, which makes it onerous or impossible to get many basic details about them. Exoplanets are doubly frustrating because any light they emit (light that would give hints about what’s happening on the surface) is often overwhelmed by the light of the parent star.

But the new planet, called GJ 1132b, is only a cosmic stone’s throw from Earth, orbiting a fairly dim star, and appears to be a rocky world with an atmosphere. And while its surface temperature indicates that it may have more in common with Venus than Earth, it is so perfectly primed for Earth-based studying, that astrophysicist Drake Deming hailed it as “arguably the most important planet ever found outside the solar system.”

This sounds extremely promising.  I can’t wait until they get more pics of this thing possibly from the Hubble, ESO or a new telescope system that has yet to launch!

And the video below is a cool mini documentary on exoplanets.

thanks to space.com for the great info