The Times' science editor Mark Henderson reports:
Astronomers have confirmed that a planet orbiting a distant star has a rocky structure similar to that of Earth, a find that shortens the odds on extraterrestrial life being discovered.
New observations of a planet named Corot-7b, which circles a star 500 light years away in the constellation Monoceros, or the Unicorn, have shown that its density is similar to the Earth’s, indicating that it is also a solid, rocky world.
The discovery is important for the prospects of discovering life elsewhere because Corot-7b is the first exoplanet — a planet beyond our solar system — orbiting another star that has been found to have the sort of solid structure that might harbour living things.
Although it is unlikely that the planet itself could be home to living organisms because it is so hot — it is so close to its parent star that scientists have likened it to Dante’s Inferno — the new research suggests that other rocky worlds are probably common. […]
“Theoretical models suggest that the planet may have lava or boiling oceans on its surface. With such extreme conditions, this planet is definitively not a place for life to develop.”
The confirmed existence of a planet with a rocky structure and a density like the Earth’s, however, increases the chances that similar worlds with more favourable conditions for life will be found.
The Corot probe and the Nasa Kepler planet-hunting observatory are currently in orbit looking for such planets.
Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who works on the Kepler project, said: “The evidence is becoming overwhelming that we live in a crowded Universe.”
Mick Hartley 
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