The same goes for calling it ‘cold’. 400 degrees Kelvin would be ‘cool’, but 400 Celsius is NOT. The solar system has several planets well below that temperature. 40K would be ‘cold’.

A science writers writing a science article should not be so afraid of using numbers. They are very necessary to make things clear and definite.

Not really. There’s 851 exosolar planets currently detected & verified. 337 are within 50 light years, 28 are within 10 ly. In fact, 100 light years is pretty much an average distance. The consensus now is that most stars have planets, and if planets also exist in open space, one would expect there to be a large number of them within 10 or 15 light years. So this is not really “Near Earth’s Solar System” in general populace terminology or in planet-hunter terminology. Just because this type of planet is hard to detect doesn’t make it more valid to call the first find “near”. In fact, you’d think it would be necessary to look even closer to find something that didn’t have its own light source.

If somebody studies galaxies, yes, they would consider this to be ‘astoundingly’ close. But we’re not looking for planets in other galaxies, so that point is moot.

Brenda – the assumption is that the planet formed at the same time as the stars and traveled with them. It is possible it fell into their gravity well long after it was formed, so you may end up being right. But the infrared analysis I think is the clincher that it’s not a brown dwarf.