A planet with mass similar to Earth, "just around the corner"

Nuno Santos, from the Astrophysics Center (CAUP) and the Faculty of Science of the University of Porto, is one of the researchers on the international team that has detected a planet with a mass similar to Earth's in Alpha Centauri B, the star system closest to the Sun. Published in the journal Nature, this discovery constitutes a technological achievement and opens up real prospects for detecting other similar planets among the background "noise" that exists in space. The research was funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).