Astronomers Michel Mayor (R) and Stephan

Astronomers Michel Mayor (R) and Stephane Udry (L) of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory attend an astronomy conference in Nantes, western France, on June 16, 2008. European astronomers had located dozens of giant planets in three distant solar systems, said Mayor today. A trio of these 'super-Earths' -- so-called because they are several times the mass of our own planet -- were detected orbiting a star known as HD 40307 some 42 lights away. The recent batch of exoplanets were all spotted with the High-Accuracy Radial-Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a 3.6-metre telescope and spectograph perched atop La Scilla mountain at the southern edge of Chile's Atacama Desert. AFP PHOTO FRANK PERRY (Photo credit should read FRANCK PERRY/AFP via Getty Images)