I thought this was pretty neat. Apparently there's a planet called Gliese 581, which has just recently been discovered, that is in the right orbit around its star to give it near-earth temperatures. While it's still a long way from being declared 'habitable', it seems to be the best candidate for alien life since Mars was discovered to be a barren wasteland.
The gravity is just under 3 times that of Earth, which is survivable if not exactly comfortable, and it is 'only' 20.5 light years away, which while hardly a small distance isn't too bad on galactic scales. OK, so it's a bit early to be booking your next holiday there, but I still reckon it's the most interesting thing to come up in astronomy for quite a while.
