Using facilities operated by the European Southern Observatory and other telescopes, the worldwide team discovered the planet, called Proxima b, which orbits Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System.

Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced Wednesday they've observed a rocky Earth like planet in the goldilocks habitable zone around nearby Proxima Centauri, astronomer Ansgar Reiners told CNN.

"When astronomers talk about a potential habitable planet, all they mean is that it's the right distance from the star to possibly have liquid water on the surface", Butler said. But it's a start.

This spectrograph, attached to a 3.6m telescope in Chile, detects the very slight wobble induced in a star when circled by a gravitationally bound planet. The new world has a minimum mass 1.3 times that of Earth's and is likely rocky.

For the first half of 2016, telescopes around the world monitored Proxima Centauri in a coordinated effort called the Pale Red Dot campaign.

In research published in the journal Nature, they decribe how they noticed the tiny movements or wobble of Proxima Centauri light spectrum, caused by the gravitational pull of Proxima b.

He added that the planet appeared to have a "normal" orbit - not a highly eccentric one, like that of a comet, which would not be conducive to life. It has taken 20 years to go from finding any planet to finding potentially habitable planets.

"The curiosity to know more about the planet (most importantly whether it hosts life) will give the Starshot initiative a sense of urgency in finding out more facts about the planet, especially those facts that can not be inferred with existing telescopes from our current vantage point on Earth, at a distance of 4.24 light years from Proxima". The new find emerged when researchers combined recent data with previous studies conducted at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

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Here is what we know about the planet, as well as the questions that researchers hope to be able to answer. This means that the potentially habitable planet is practically on our doorstep. Named in reference to the reddish hue of light thrown off by Proxima Centauri, and as a tribute to Carl Sagan's moniker for Earth as the "pale blue dot", the campaign was formed to keep an eye on our Sun's closest neighbor, in the hope of spotting an orbiting Earth-like exoplanet. The aim of Breakthrough Starshot is to invest $100 million to demonstrate that a spacecraft could be built to reach Proxima Centauri's distance in a journey time of "only" 20 years. The proximity of this new planet means scientists will have an easier time doing follow-up studies to learn more about it, and even obtain images. Plants on Proxima b would probably have darkly colored or black leaves that would enable them to use absorb the dark star's light in photosynthesis.

The discovery of a almost Earth-size planet orbiting the sun's nearest neighbor is a major step toward confirmation that such worlds are, in fact, common. And during stellar flare-ups, Proxima b is blasted with high-energy particles, too-unless it has a protective magnetic field like Earth's.

Proxima b is only 7.5 million kilometres from its parent star - some 5% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun - and it takes just 11.2 days to complete one orbit.

Twenty five years ago, astronomers had no direct evidence of planets beyond our solar system. Nonetheless, it is tantalizing to imagine a habitable world so close to home.

The cool star has a radius that is 14% of the sun's, a mass of about 12% of the sun's and a luminosity of.15% of the sun's. Detecting Earth-sized planets is much more hard, requiring extremely sensitive instruments and longer periods of observation. While water may be possible on the surface of Proxima b, the planet may be tidally locked in place with one side in perpetual daylight and the other in darkness.

But that's where the really exciting part comes in: We may have a way to get up close and personal with Proxima b in the not-too-distant future.

"We're talking about a planet that has very similar properties to Earth", says Guillem Anglada-Escude of Queen Mary University of London, who led the research team of more than 30 scientists around the world. In the scheme of our universe, 4.25 light-years is not very far, but with our current space travel technologies, it would still take thousands of years for a human expedition to get there.

Prof Loeb raised the possibility of humans one day colonising Proxima b.