Artist’s impression: five planets orbit the star Tau Ceti, which is just 11.9 light-years from Earth. Astronomers have discovered that the closest Sun-like star, Tau Ceti, is orbited by five planets, one of which is in the “habitable range”. If its existence is confirmed, the planet could be the closest potentially life-harboring world to our own. Tau Ceti, twelve light years away, belongs... 

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...