US News
Astronomers discover Earth’s new ‘next-door neighbor’ — a potentially habitable planet
By Daniel Cody
Published July 4, 2026, 12:44 a.m. ET
A newly discovered and potentially habitable exoplanet scientists are calling Earth’s “next-door neighbor” could be the next stepping stone in humanity’s search for extraterrestrial life.
“This one’s exciting,” Paul Robertson of the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that “it’s one of our closest cosmic neighbors.”
“Twenty-five light years sounds like a long way, but the Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across, so in that respect it’s our next-door neighbor,” said Robertson, the lead author of a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal.
A new exoplanet, GJ 3378b, dubbed Earth’s “next-door neighbor,” could be a key step toward finding extraterrestrial life.
Space.com
The exoplanet, called “GJ 3378b,” is approximately twice the size of Earth and is located in the Goldilocks zone, the scientific region around a star where a planet’s surface temperature is just right to maintain liquid water.
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Whether the planet has an atmosphere remains a crucial component of its ability to host life — GJ 3378b sits on the edge of the “cosmic shoreline,” a metric that determines whether a planet can retain an atmosphere based on gravity versus the radiation it receives.
https://nypost.com/2026/07/04/us-news/earths-new-next-door-neighbor-a-potentially-habitable-planet-discovered-by-astronomers/
