A nearby ‘super‑Earth’ just 25 light years from our solar system has been recategorised as a lighter, likely rocky world sitting in the habitable zone of its star, raising fresh hopes in the search for Alien life, according to astronomers behind a new analysis of the planet GJ 3378 b.

For context, GJ 3378 b has been on scientists’ radar for several years as one of thousands of exoplanets catalogued since the 1990s, when the first worlds beyond our solar system were confirmed. More than 6,000 exoplanets are now known, from blisteringly hot gas giants to ocean worlds and compact ‘super‑Earths.’ Yet despite that cosmic headcount, no confirmed evidence of alien life has turned up. Planets like GJ 3378 b matter because they help narrow the field, picking out nearby targets where habitability is at least plausible.

The star in question is a red dwarf, cooler and smaller than our Sun, with GJ 3378 b circling it roughly every 21.45 days. The planet was initially thought to be hefty, weighing in at about 5.26 times the mass of Earth based on measurements taken with the SPIRou spectrograph. That kind of mass puts a world into awkward territory. Above roughly four to five Earth masses, planets tend to hold onto thick gas envelopes, turning them into scaled‑down versions of Neptune rather than solid, Earth‑like bodies.

The revised study took a second look, folding in extra radial‑velocity data from the Hobby–Eberly and WIYN telescopes. Once those readings were combined, the team cut the planet’s minimum mass to around 2.3 Earth masses. That apparently modest numerical tweak has major implications. At that size, GJ 3378 b falls firmly into the realm where a dense, rocky composition is likely rather than a bloated mini‑Neptune.

Researchers predict a radius of about 1.29 times that of Earth, though that figure is still model‑based rather than directly measured. Its exact density, surface conditions and atmospheric make‑up remain entirely unconfirmed, so any talk of oceans, clouds or weather systems still belongs in the ‘maybe, but we do not know’ column. Nothing is confirmed yet, so everything should still be taken with a grain of salt.

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