The nearest Earthlike planets could be just 13 light-years away, putting them in our cosmic "back yard", astronomers have claimed.
Six per cent of red dwarfs, the most common stars in our galaxy, have Earth-sized planets which could be habitable, according to data from Nasa's Kepler space telescope. On this basis, experts from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics calculated that the closest Earthlike world is probably as close as 13 light-years to Earth.