what if it is habited?
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2007/pr-22-07.html
Using the ESO 3.6-m telescope, a team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists discovered a super-Earth about 5 times the mass of the Earth that orbits a red dwarf, already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet. The astronomers have also strong evidence for the presence of a third planet with a mass about 8 Earth masses.
“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” explains Stéphane Udry, from the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland) and lead-author of the paper reporting the result. “Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky – like our Earth – or fully covered with oceans,” he adds.
http://planetquest1.jpl.nasa.gov/atlas/atlas_profile.cfm?Planet=340
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/news/superEarth.cfm
http://www.seti.org/site/pp.asp?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=2703981
SETI Institute scientists Seth Shostak, Jill Tarter, and Frank Drake have all expressed their excitement about the news and the implications for SETI searching. Gliese 581 has been targeted for SETI searches twice in the past with no hint of a radio signal, but this new information may mean a third search with the more powerful Allen Telescope Array.