It's not easy to uncover exoplanets, largely lightless objects that either lurk in the dark void of space or are blown out by the light of a nearby star. But astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope believe they've found a new one — and it's just four light years away.

Using the James Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument, the team found strong clues of a mysterious gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, the nearest star system to Earth. Tantalizingly, the suspected world appears to be orbiting in the habitable zone of one the system's three stars, Alpha Centauri A, which is a remarkably Sun-like star.

The detection, as detailed in a pair of new studies accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, isn't definitive. But if it's confirmed, the planet would be the n

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