Are we alone in the universe? We still can't answer that question for sure, but we're making progress. Scientists recently discovered a new "exoplanet," a planet outside of our solar system, that appears to hold a great deal of promise for future study. The planet lies around 1500 lightyears from Earth, is about the size of Jupiter and revolves around a star at roughly the distance that Mercury revolves around our sun. What's most interesting about this exoplanet, however, it it's surface temperature, which is estimated to be between -20 and 160 degrees celsius. This kind of a suspected range actually makes it possible to study it using models that apply to our own solar system. Other exoplanets that have been found in the past commonly have extremely close star orbits, which makes their temperatures very high, or elliptical orbits that result in dramatic changes in temperature. These prove difficult to study. This new exoplanet has been named COROT-9b after the COROT satellite that discovered it. It joins the list of over 400 other exoplanets that have been discovered so far.