The European Southern Observatory has just announced the detection of a planet in orbit of Alpha Centauri B. This is a roughly Sun-like star, and part of the closest star system to Earth (together with Alpha Centauri A and Proxima Centauri). The estimated mass of the planet is slightly higher than that of the Earth, but it orbits too close to the star to be in the habitable zone. Nonetheless, this is suggestive of other planets in the same system.
My day just got a lot more exciting 
Very cool discovery.
Well, actually, given that it’s got a 3.2 day orbit, it’s a pretty hot discovery.
Man. In my adult lifetime, we’ve gone from exoplanets being pure, 100% speculation, and the province of science fiction, to knowing about hundreds of them, from the closest star beyond our own Sun, all the way out to stars tens of thousands of light-years away.
This is pretty awesome.
This is totally awesome. Hopefully this will spur development of techniques to find Earth-mass planets in habitable zones.
Do we know of any stars where there almost certainly are not planets now?
With an estimated surface temperature of 1,200 C, you’d better slap on the sunscreen.
The good news is, in a system where one planet has formed, it’s likely there are others. They will be much more difficult to detect, being further from the parent star.
Well, at least with that system we have some minor chance of getting there someday. Yeah, 5 light years give or take is no walk in the park but it sure beats hundreds of light years.