Top News | Reuters.co.ca: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A cold, heavy 'super-Earth' has been found orbiting a distant star, using a method that holds promise for detecting faraway planets that closely resemble our own, astronomers said on Monday.
The planet weighs 13 times as much as Earth and is orbiting a star about 9,000 light-years away. But instead of circling close to its star, as Earth does, this 'super-Earth' is about as distant from its star as Jupiter and Saturn are from the Sun.
An international team of scientists figured the new planet probably has a temperature of minus 330 degrees F (minus 201 C), making it one of the coldest planets detected outside our solar system.
The discovery is billed as a super-Earth because it is thought to be a rocky, terrestrial planet like Earth, even though it is much more massive.
The planet was detected by astronomers using a project called OGLE -- short for Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment -- which looks for changes in light coming from distant stars."
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