NASA discovers 'super earth' and hails it as humanity's 'next door neighbour'

USA: NASA stargazers have discovered the closest ever "super earth" - a rocky planet which is a relatively tiny 21 light years away.

Scientists dubbed the new planet HD 219134b and hailed it as a scientific "gold mine".

The alien world is orbiting around a star in the Cassiopeia constellation, which can be seen with the naked eye.

It is interesting because it is "transiting" in front of its own sun - which means it is crossing in front of it.

This presents a treasure trove of information for eager space scientists.

"Transiting exoplanets are worth their weight in gold because they can be extensively characterized," said Michael Werner, project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

"This exoplanet will be one of the most studied for decades to come."

Although it is not humanity's closest exoplanet, the newly discovered super earth is the nearest to be identified as rocky.

Sadly, it is orbiting too close to its star for life to develop.

"Most of the known planets are hundreds of light-years away. This one is practically a next-door neighbor," said astronomer Lars A. Buchhave of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

So will we be visiting this planet any time soon?

According to NASA, it will take the Voyager probe (which is travelling at 37,000 miles per hour) a whopping 80,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri, our nearest star.

This means it would take a massive 420,000 years to get to our nearest super earth - more than twice the amount of time humans have existed on the earth.

If you decided to stick to the British speed limit of 30 miles per hour, we estimate you'd arrive at HD 219134b in about 517,860,000 (roughly half a billion) years.

Let's hope scientists can master that warp drive we've all been talking about and get us travelling a bit faster.