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

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