Gliese 581 is a red-dwarf star about 20 light-years from us, around which orbit a few planets. The most recently discovered one is in the right spot to support life and is enough like Earth that life there could indeed exist.
Most other planets found orbiting other stars have either been too close or too far away from their own stars or have been gas giants more like Jupiter than our own rocky world. Life could potentially exist in some of those circumstances, but it would be very weird compared to us. We, of course, would be very weird to it, and I don't just mean Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber. Although I suppose it's possible that these other life forms would find those two normal and the rest of us weird, which would also prove they lacked a sense of hearing and communicated by signs, strange clothing and silly gestures like publishing your autobiography at 16.
Anyway, the planet is named Gliese 581g, or it will be unless there are indeed folks living there who tell us what they call it (Look out for the copyright infringement lawsuit of the galaxy if they call it "Earth"). Conditions on Gliese 581g are kind of extreme. The planet is tidally locked with its star, meaning one side faces towards it and one faces away from it all the time. The side facing towards it is probably plenty hot, and the side facing away is probably plenty cold. There should be a tolerable zone at the border, where all of the (literally) cool people will hang out, if they exist.
If there is life on Gliese 581g, it may have been around for a very long time. Because of their small size, red dwarf stars burn quite a bit longer than stars like our sun. There is as yet no way to determine whether the radiation of a yellow sun like our own would give that life powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, such as leaping tall buildings in single bound, outracing bullets or telling locomotives where to get off and making them like it.
Although nearby in astronomical terms, the 20 light-year distance between our own sun and Gliese 581 means that we are actually seeing it and its planets not the way they look today, but the way they looked in 1990. And it means that whoever may be living on Gliese 581g is seeing us not as we are today, but as we were in 1990. So unless we swiftly develop faster-than-light travel to visit them, warn them and explain ourselves, they will one day see us watching From Justin to Kelly and paying attention to Keith Olbermann as a political commentor, after which they will have no choice but to decide that our planet is home to no intelligent life.
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