Astronomers studied Barnard's Star, a red dwarf just six light years away -- practically in our back garden, galactically speaking -- and noticed the presence of a "frozen, dimly lit world" at least 3.2 times heavier than Earth.

The planet, known for now as Barnard's Star b, is the second nearest to Earth outside the solar system and orbits its host star once every 233 days.

"It's important because it's really our nextdoor neighbour and we like to meet our neighbours in general," Ignasi Ribas, from the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia and Spain's Institute of Space Sciences, told AFP.

Despite being relatively close to its parent star, the planet receives less than two percent of the energy Earth gets from the Sun, and the team estimates it has a surface temperature of -170 degrees Celsius (-274 Farenheit) -- far too cold to support life as we know it.
The gap between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson, in the election for the latter’s Senate seat, has only continued to narrow. The race was already within the 0.5 percent margin needed to trigger a recount on Wednesday, when Scott had roughly a 35,000-vote lead. That’s been cut in half to about 17,000 as ballots have continued to come in. While Scott is still the favorite to ultimately win, FiveThirtyEight has shifted the race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.”

One reason for hope for Nelson is that a traditionally Democratic area, Broward County, has so far reported fewer votes for the Senate race compared with the gubernatorial race, according to data compiled by MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki. In other Florida counties, no such discrepancy exists. While some of the discrepancy could be due to genuine undervotes—for instance, the design of the ballot may have led some voters to miss it and not vote in that race—it’s possible that the county hasn’t correctly counted all the ballots. About 24,000 ballots in Broward County registered a vote in the governor’s race but not for the Senate race.