While the Kepler mission turns up its ever-growing crop of exoplanets, a group of astronomers has announced an exciting find closer to home: looking towards Scorpius, there’s a super-Earth-sized planet just 22 light-years distant, with a habitable-zone orbit.

22 light years is an extremely small distance in astronomical terms. There is no way that humans could live on this planet, as it's gravity is 4.5 times that of earth, but there could be things living there. Water is quite abundant in our solar system and could be abundant there as well. With current technology we could send a robot probe to this place in less than 300 years.

I'm glad SETI isn't picking up any radio signals - any civilization sophisticated enough to have sent radio signals early enough that we could receive them now must be far more sophisticated than us, and would therefore destroy us if we ever encountered them and there was some conflicting interest in resources.

Jackpot: astronomers tag Goldilocks planet • The Register