Astronomers have reportedly discovered another planet outside our solar system that could have the potential for life, and it’s especially exciting since it’s closer to Earth than any other planet that could have life on it.

  • New planet might be able to support life as we know it
  • Planet is a relatively close 4.25 light years away
  • Found by European Southern Observatory, not confirmed by NASA

According to phys.org, German newspaper Der Spiegel made the announcement that our solar system's nearest star, Proxima Centauri, has a planet that could be habitable to human life. That means it’s within that perfect range of its sun that could allow water to flow on its surface.

The planet has not been named yet, but it’s only 4.25 light years away. This is actually much closer than any other potentially habitable planet we’ve known about before.

NASA’s Kepler mission focuses on finding planets, but so far, of the thousands of planets on its list, most of them are a few dozen to thousands of light years away.

It’s important to point out that the newspaper said the discovery was made by the European Southern Observatory. It's been known in the past to claim to have discovered close planets but never released convincing data. NASA has yet to confirm this as a potentially habitable planet.

However, if it does find that this planet is what European scientists say it is, this could be the first planet that mankind could travel to within a human lifespan.