Hi Bojan & All,
This is a wonderful, wonderful feat of dedication and care to be able to compile such a massive dataset and analyse it. Kudos to the team !
One thing that is missing (and it has already been pointed out in the thread) from so many of the print and electronic media going around today is a very important word that is in both the original paper and the press release:
"potentially".
This body is "
potentially habitable"
I point that out not to say it has or hasn't got people, advanced life, simple life or no life -- it may. It may not. All this paper and the press release has basically said that this is a planet reasonably similar in mass to the Earth, that may be assumed to have an approximately similar composition that is at the right distance from the parent star that if water is present, there may be portions of the planet were it could exist as a liquid. Liquid water is very, very important if not vital to life. So it is an important discovery as well as a great technical accomplishment by the team. There is no evidence that water is or isn't present, or an atmosphere, or what the atmosphere is like, or the surface. for that matter. Those facts may or many not be determined at a later time.
So I wouldn't be leaping to any further unwarranted or unsupported conclusions.
That's not to detract from the work by the team which is an incredible feat of persistence and technical know-how. Good on them !!
The original paper (I've only read the first few pages so far but it is reasonably easy going -- the abstract is written at almost popular level) is here:
http://www.ucolick.org/~vogt/ms_press-1.pdf
Best,
Les D