Quote Originally Posted by Don Corleone
That is really neat, but being 13 times closer to it's radiatant star is bound to make for some radioactive environments. Not to mention, if there is sentient life there, evolving under 2g means they could kick our ass!
It would depend on the radiation the star sends out (don't know much about that) and the amount of radiation that atmosphere can block. Due to it's higher gravitational pull it would have a thicker atmosphere than earth (I assume) and perhaps that could mean it coudl block out more radiation ?

However, this planet in itself might not be so important, but the following conclusion is:

Quote Originally Posted by the article
The real importance is not so much the discovery of this planet itself, but the fact that it shows that Earth-like planets are probably extremely common in the Universe.

There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy alone and many astronomers believe most of these stars have planets.

The fact that almost as soon as we have built a telescope capable of detecting small, earth-like worlds, one turns up right on our cosmic doorstep, shows that statistically, there are probably billions of earths out there.
Even if only 10 billion stars are in a 'good' segment of the galaxy of the galaxy, if only one in ten of those have planets, if only one in ten of those have earth like planets and if only one in ten of those are capable of sustaining life (for whatever other reason the others can't) we're still looking at 10 million possible earths...