SUPER EARTH: Scientists discover life-supporting planet 'right at Earth's front door'

"It's not just in our backyard, it's right in our face," lead researcher Professor Steven Vogt said.
The planet is 22 light years away, previously thought to be 20 light years, and is formally known as Gliese 581g, but Professor Vogt told news.com.au that he has since named it after his wife.
"I called it 'Zarmina's world'," Professor Vogt said.
While his claims have been previously reported, a new study, released to News.com.au this week, dismisses calls of balderdash by the international science community. 
The study - by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington - shows the planet is twice the size of Earth. It is known as a "super Earth" due to its ability to hold on to its gassy atmosphere, which increases its chances of retaining liquid.
Whether this liquid is frozen and stored under the surface or flowing freely across the planet, the researchers can't say.
The scientist from the University of California said that the planet has "churchly weather".
"From the energy bounds and brightness of the star we can tell that the temperatures would be just about right to stand on the surface and feel the warmth of the alien star on your face, like standing in the park in Sydney."
However the researchers were unable to determine what the surface of the planet is like, Professor Vogt said.
The planet exists in a band of perpetual twilight near its orbiting star known as the "Goldilocks zone" - an area near earth that isn't too hot, or cold but is just right for sustaining life.
Prof Vogt said scientists will eventually be able to send out probes in search for advanced civilisations
"If you get lucky and find civilisations, you'd be able to have a two-way conversation within a human life-time," he said. "You don't want to have to spend 1000 years waiting to hear 'wazzup', and then another 1000 years before they get to hear not much, and you?'."
The researcher said after making first contact, scientists may receive an answer within 44 years.
"Within a few hundred years you could be able to receive picture postcards from an iPhone or Android and be able to listen to what they sound like, and sample their way of life from a spacecraft," he said.
"There is something out there."
These findings are not without controversy, however.
This isn't the first time Professor Vogt has claimed the existence of a habitable planet. His findings back in 2010 sparked a scientific cat fight between the US researchers and a rival team of Swiss astronomers, known as "HARPS" (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet).
HARPS published research saying it had found four planets that orbited the same star as Gliese 581g (which at the time had not yet been confirmed).
Prof Vogt's team questioned the team's data and suggested two more planets existed in the Goldilock's Zone and published its findings in the US’s Astrophysical Journal.
HARPS claimed that Vogt's research was nonsense, creating waves in the scientific community.
The international media then seized on HARPS and Vogt's data, reporting problems with both team's research.
A year later the HARPS team released expanded data on its findings confirming the existence of four planets but not Vogt's extra two.
Vogt's team then analysed HARPS data and tried unsuccessfully to replicate the findings.
Prof Vogt told news.com.au that they discovered that the Swiss team omitted five points of data which related to the radial velocity of the planets because it didn't fit their data model or modes of thinking.
“Such setting of eccentricities introduces biases and personal choices into the model that inappropriately affect the resulting solution,” Prof Vogt wrote in the study, which was provided to News.com.au.
"You're basically deliberately deleting information in your data that's telling you there's more in the system than you're telling people about. You're hiding that stuff,” he told News.com.au.
Prof Vogt's study will be published in European astrophysics journal, Astronomisch Naschrischten tomorrow (AEST).