Radiotelescope antennas of the ALMA ( Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) project, in the Chajnantor plateau, Atacama desert, some 1500 kilometers north of Santiago, on October 1, 2011. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), the world’s largest radiotelescope, located in the mountains of northern Chile, has received its finishing touches. The device, whose completion has occasioned... 

Next-door neighbour: An artist’s impression of the recently found planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to our own (click on the image to enlarge it) An Earth-sized planet has been found orbiting a star in Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbouring solar system. The mystery world circling Alpha Centauri B is thought to be much too hot to support... 

A red dwarf star. Scientists have long assumed that the best chance of finding alien life in the universe is on planets similar to ours. The latest scientific discoveries show that there might be tens of billions of such planets in our galaxy alone. ­Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile came to these findings after studying more than a hundred red dwarves, the most common stars... 

European astronomers have claimed to discover at least 16 new so-called “Super-Earths” —planets similar to our own but many times denser— of which one is potentially habitable. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) said the exoplanets were seen through the High Accuracy Radical velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) telescope in Chile. “The harvest of discoveries from HARPS has exceeded...