Scientists discover potentially habitable 'super-Earth' just 25 light-years from our solar system

Astronomers have found a potentially habitable planet orbiting a star only 25 light‑years from Earth — close enough, researchers say, to make it one of the best places yet to look for conditions that might support life beyond our solar system.

Scientists discover potentially habitable planet near Earth

The planet, called GJ 3378b, circles a red dwarf in the constellation Camelopardalis. While 25 light‑years sounds far, on the scale of the Milky Way it puts the world in our immediate celestial neighbourhood — one of Earth's closest “cosmic neighbours”, the team says.

The discovery was led by scientists at the University of California, Irvine and is published in The Astrophysical Journal. GJ 3378b is believed to be a rocky “super‑Earth” — larger than our planet but smaller than ice giants like Neptune — with an estimated mass of about 2.3 times Earth’s.

What makes it particularly interesting is its location in the star’s habitable, or “Goldilocks”, zone — the range of distances where temperatures might allow liquid water to exist on the surface, provided the planet has a suitable atmosphere. Liquid water is widely seen as a key ingredient for life as we know it.

“This one’s exciting,” said Paul Robertson, assistant professor of astronomy at UC Irvine and lead author of the study. “It’s one of our closest cosmic neighbours. Twenty‑five light‑years sounds like a long way, but the Milky Way is about 100,000 light‑years across, so in that respect it’s our next‑door neighbour.”

A major unknown is whether GJ 3378b has an atmosphere. Proximity to a star doesn’t guarantee habitability. Red dwarfs are common but can unleash strong radiation that strips atmospheres over time, potentially making otherwise promising planets hostile to life.

The planet appears to sit near the so‑called “cosmic shoreline” — a theoretical boundary that helps determine whether a world can hold on to an atmosphere despite stellar radiation. If GJ 3378b has retained one, it would be a prime target for future studies searching for signs of life.

The initial detection came from observations in 2024. Follow‑up work with instruments such as the Habitable‑zone Planet Finder and the NEID spectrometer refined the picture, suggesting GJ 3378b is likely rocky rather than a gaseous mini‑Neptune — a detail that improves its prospects as a potentially habitable world.

Researchers are careful to stress there’s no evidence of life there. Current telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope, face limits in studying the planet’s atmosphere because GJ 3378b does not transit its star from our viewpoint.

Future missions — for example NASA’s proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory, expected in the coming decades — may eventually be able to probe the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets like GJ 3378b and search for possible biosignatures. For now, astronomers say this newly identified world ranks among the most compelling nearby targets in the search for life beyond Earth.