The planet lies in what they describe as a ‘habitable zone’, neither too near its sun to dry out or too far away which freezes it.

And the discovery could help answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe, which has been plagued astronomers and alien fanatics for years.

Scientists found the planet, Gliese 667Cc, orbiting around a red dwarf star, 22 light years away from the earth.

Red dwarf stars are the most common stars in the neighbourhood of the sun, usually hosting planets called gas giants, which are not composed of rock matter.

Re-analysing data from the European Southern Observatory, the astronomers found Gliese 667Cc is a solid planet with roughly four and a half times the mass of Earth.

The University Göttingen and University of California scientists have calculated the planet recieves ten per cent less light from its red dwarf star than the Earth gets from the Sun.

As the light is in the infrared area, the planet still receives nearly the same amount of energy as the Earth, meaning water could be liquid and surface temperatures could be similar to ours.

Astronomers are hailing the plant as the ‘Holy Grail’ of discoveries, as 20 years ago scientists were still arguing about the existence of planets beyond our solar system.

Since the discovery of the first extrasolar planet in 1995, astronomers have confirmed the existence of more than 760 planets beyond the solar system, with only four believed to be in a habitable zone.

One of the most successful tools of planet hunters is the High Accuracy Radial Planetary Searcher (HARPS) telescope, which measures the radial velocity of a star.

Scientists using this telescope analyse the small wobbles in a stars motion caused by the gravitational response of a planet, determining the position and size of a planet indirectly.
Currently, they can detect planets which are 3-5 times the mass of the Earth but, in the future, they could detect planets which are smaller than twice the mass of Earth.

Steven Vogt, an astronomer from the University of California, said: “It´s the Holy Grail of exo-planet research to find a planet orbiting around a star at the right distance so it´s not too close where it would lose all its water and not too far where it would freeze.

“It´s right there in the habitable zone – there´s no question or discussion about it. It is not on the edge. It is right in there.”

Guillem Anglada-Escudé, of University Göttingen, Germany, said: “With the advent of new generation of instruments, researchers will be able to survey many dwarf stars for similar planets and eventually look for spectroscopic signatures of life in one of these worlds.”

Steve Carter, 35, knew he had been adopted from a Hawaiian orphanage as a child, but never knew anything about his biological family. He had always been puzzled about a couple things, like his birth certificate, which wasn’t created until almost a year after his birth, and listed him as a half-native Hawaiian, he told CBS News.

“I don’t really have many of the features of a native Hawaiian,” says Carter, who’s blond and blue-eyed.

He became even more curious about his past after hearing the story of Carlina White, the Atlanta woman who made headlines when she found her baby picture online, then learned she had been kidnapped from a Harlem hospital as an infant in 1987.
Carter’s hunch was confirmed when he found a picture of himself last year on MissingKids.com, CBS News reports.

But the photo wasn’t of Carter — it was an age-progression image of what Max Panama Barnes, who was listed as a 5-month-old missing baby, would look like at 26 years old.
“My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, that’s me,’ ” he told CBS News.
Carter and Barnes had the same birthplaces, and their birth dates were one day apart.
He called the Honolulu police department and set up a DNA test.
“I let them know my info and they ran with it,” he told CNN. “They were the ones who did all the legwork.”

Nearly a year later, Carter had the truth: He was born Max Panama Barnes.
“That’s when it really started to sink in that I’ve got a family,” he told CBS News. “I’ve got another family.”

Carter learned that his biological mother ran away with him in 1977. She changed his name, birth date and even the race of his father — explaining why his birth certificate listed him as a half-native Hawaiian.

Carter thinks his mother put him in the orphanage from which he was adopted, and that she wound up in a psychiatric hospital, according to CBS News.
By the time Carter’s biological father reported him missing, he had a new identity and police didn’t make the connection.

Now, Carter has reunited with his biological father, Max Barnes, who lives in northern California.
“He introduced himself over the phone,” Barnes told CBS News. “And I was absolutely, positively, thunderstruck and amazed. And we just sort of, in an hour of conversation, tried to catch up on 32 years.”

Barnes explained that Carter’s mother would often take spontaneous trips with him, but she always returned. He added that he never stopped searching for his son.
“Not one day went by when I wasn’t — he wasn’t in my thoughts,” Barnes told CBS News.
Carter, who still has several relatives to meet, says he’s still trying to figure out who his mother is, and what happened in the three weeks between his disappearance and his arrival at the orphanage, CNN reports.

The new mantra for a growing number of American youths: Party hard, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.

A new study of adolescent health around the globe found the United States had the highest mortality rate for people ages 10-to-24 of any high-income country in the world.

The American kids were also No. 1 in pot-smoking, moving toward the top spot in boozing — all while still hitting the gym harder than their contemporaries in other wealthy nations.

Death on the wrong end of a gun or any other violent method is up to 20 times more likely in the U.S. than the other 27 wealthy nations, according to findings reported in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

Traffic accidents combined with the violent deaths boosted the U.S. to its undesired position atop the mortality charts, The Lancet wrote in a series of articles this week.

For binge-drinking among youths, Ireland and Austria posted the highest rates among high-income countries — although the U.S. was about ready to buy the next round.

“The drinking patterns of USA adolescents are catching up with those in other (high-income countries),” The Lancet reported. One reason the American numbers are disturbing: Most of the domestic binge drinkers are too young to drink legally.

While the U.S. drinking age is 21, the number is as low as 16 in other nations. Binge drinking was defined as five drinks or more during a single day, and roughly one in five adolescents reported at least one binge a week in the top-ranked nations.

At age 15, the country with the most young binge drinkers was the Ukraine; the country with the least was Norway.

The Lancet also found that both U.S. boys and girls were tops when it came to smoking marijuana, trailed by Canada, Spain and France.

Despite the grim numbers regarding death, dope and drink, there was good news in the piece titled “Health of the World’s Adolescents.”

The numbers indicated that U.S. kids ages 13-15 exercised more than their global counterparts in high-income countries. The boys were No. 1 and the girls No. 2 in the rankings.

Dr. Lukshmi Puttanniah, a child psychiatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital, said the exercise numbers boded well for the future of American adolescents.

“Physical activity is found to be a great protective factor against psychiatric disorders, substance abuse and other issues,” she said.

Yet more than one-third of American boys were categorized as obese, leading The Lancet to describe the problem as an “epidemic.”

The U.S. was nowhere near the top in adolescent suicide rates among well-off countries, where Finland and Ireland were tops.

Doctors are seriously worried about a sick trend — teens drinking hand sanitizer.

Six young people recently landed in a Southern California emergency room with alcohol poisoning after chugging the antimicrobial gel.

Hand sanitizer contains a whopping 62% ethyl alcohol — making the foul liquid akin to a shot of hard liquor.

YouTube has seen an influx of videos of teens chugging the foul germ-killing goo.

Dr. Young-jin Sue, a pediatric toxicologist at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, said that she hasn’t seen any cases of teens coming into the ER after overdosing on the alcohol-rich gel.

“Teens don’t have access to ethyl alcohol so they resort to crazy things,” she said. “It’s very concentrated, just a few ounces can make someone sick.”

Teens have a long tradition of looking in the medicine cabinet in order get a cheap buzz.

A few years ago, teens were chugging cough syrup in order to get at the opiate-like effects of dextromethorphan. Certain mouthwashes contain ethyl alcohol as well. Before pseudoephedrine went behind the pharmacy counter, teens sought it out for a quick high.

In California, where the cases were reported, authorities are suggesting parents keep an eye on their sanitizer pumps.

If they’re really worried, they can buy the gel in foam form, since it’s harder to extract alcohol from it.

As unlikely as it may sound, CBS 2 News in Chicago is reporting that government officials, in the Secret Services and the Department of Homeland Security, are secretly planning for the possibility of having to evacuate Chicago.

CBS 2 News has obtained a copy of an e-mail sent to volunteers from the Milwaukee area branch of the American Red Cross.

The email warns volunteers that the NATO summit “may create unrest or another national security incident. The American Red Cross in southeastern Wisconsin has been asked to place a number of shelters on standby in the event of evacuation of Chicago.”

The Red Cross says that the directive came directly from the “City of Chicago and the Secret Service.”