News outlets that said otherwise are just crying wolf—but they’re not the only ones at fault.

The planet in question, K2-18b, orbits a star just 110 light-years away—right next door on cosmic scales. On Wednesday, it was widely reported as a "habitable world." The headlines were prompted by two new studies that detected water in the planet's atmosphere with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Don't get me wrong, this is a very exciting result. K2-18b is the smallest planet where atmospheric features have been detected so far (a monumental technical achievement!), and provides a fascinating window into a planet very different than anything in the Solar System. It's also in the habitable zone of its host star, a region where liquid water could exist on an Earth-like planet.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/no-the-exoplanet-k2-18...