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Professor Stephen Kane was intrigued and excited. As he looked at the data, made sure P his calculations were correct and reality began to quickly set in, he sat back in his chair, a look of astonishment stretching across his face. In the course of studying a star system known to harbour a giant planet, he’d come across an object which was unlike anything he had seen before. And the discovery has the potential to be rather explosive. The object is some 66 light years from Earth in a star system called HD 104067 in the southern constellation of Corvus. It has long been known to contain a star with 82 per cent of the mass and 77 per cent of the radius of the Sun, and it’s said to be about 5 billion years old. The exoplanet of primary interest to Kane was HD 104067 b – a sub-Saturn planet with a 55-day orbit that is at least 0.2 times the mass of Jupiter. But it’s the other findings in this part of space which really caught his attention.