a team of us astronomers has found a planet that most closely resembles the Earth from among the 150 discovered so far outside our solar system. About 7.5 times as massive as the Earth, the new planet, possibly rocky, is located just 15 light years away from us. It travels in a nearly circular orbit only 3.2 million kilometres from Gliese 876 ( gj 876), its parent star (in comparison the Earth travels round the Sun in an elliptical orbit whose radius varies from 147 million km to 152 million km), and has a radius about twice that of Earth. All the other extrasolar planets discovered till date that are orbiting normal stars have been larger than Uranus, an ice giant about 15 times the mass of Earth.

"This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets,' said team member Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. "It's like Earth's bigger cousin.'

The team, led by Geoffrey Marcy, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, presented its findings on June 13, 2005 at a press conference at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.

The new find is part of a system that includes two other Jupiter-size planets. It travels fast