A recently discovered planet with the unpoetic name Corot-7b, orbiting a yellow-orange star 450 light-years away, is the smallest confirmed super-Earth—a dense, compact planet unlike the many gas giants spotted elsewhere in our galaxy. This find hints that the universe may teem with rocky worlds, including some that may genuinely resemble ours in size and temperature.
Corot-7b is the first such planet whose size has been measured, proving that it truly is a compact, dense world. But it may have plenty of company. Several other super-Earths have been identified in systems much like our solar system, with small planets closer to the star and giants in the outer orbits. Astrophysicist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington thinks this structural similarity gives a reason to suspect that these planets, too, are rocky bodies that formed much the way Earth did.
