seager

Chinese engineers have less experience than some of their Western counterparts, but make up for it in other ways, says GE's Seager.

Alternatively, the methane might simply mean that the planet happens to be very rich in carbon, Seager says.

"It's great to have entered the era that discovering super-Earths is routine, " added Seager, who was not involved in the HARPS research.

Seager and Rogers worked with an international team of researchers to analyze and validate data from the Kepler telescope.

MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager, at the NASA press conference, said earlier planetary claims "are in a gray area. "

"What's interesting is Avatar is out of date by about seven years, " Seager says.

"If they had called me or someone else in exoplanet astronomy, " Seager says, "we would have advised them to just put an Earth there. "

"Perhaps exo-Neptunes are more common than exo-Jupiters, " Seager said.

Compared with countries such as India, China is not the "absolute lowest cost" manufacturing base, as GE's Seager puts it.

"If they get really lucky this [discovery of extrasolar moons] could happen this year, " Seager says.

Still, Seager said it's crucial for his company to get into China now.

"The possibilities are endless, " Seager says.

"It's going to happen, " says astrophysicist Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"It's a trailblazing result, " says astrophysicist Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

"Initially, that is surprising, " says Sara Seager of MIT in Cambridge, US, who was not involved in the study.

"When the temperature is this high, the dominant form of carbon should be carbon monoxide, not methane, " says Seager.