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The planet isthe right distance from the star so it's not too hot and not too cold that liquid water can exist, the planet has the right surface gravity..
Gliese 581-g 'a'k'a' Goldilocks planet
Astronomers have found hundreds of planets orbiting other stars in the past decade, but they have all been so far from their suns that any water would be solid ice or so close that liquid water would boil away.
Although it has not yet been determined whether or not water exists on the planet, scientists are one hundred percent certain that Planet G can support life.
Gliese 581 b is too hot, Gilese 581 c is slightly too hot, Gliese 581 d is slightly too cold, Gliese 581 e is way too hot, Gliese 581 f is too cold, but Gliese 581 g is just right!' so the story goes.
Gliese 581 is an unassuming star: it is relativity close at 20 light years away (the 87th closest cataloged star to earth), it is only a third the mass of the sun, and it is relativity quiet in terms of stellar activity (which is beneficial for life because flares scorch planets).
Astronomers have announced the discovery of a planet with about three times the Earth’s mass orbiting the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581. That in itself is cool news; a planet like that is very hard to detect.
Gliese 581 is a red dwarf about 20 light years away. That’s pretty close as stars go; only a handful are closer. but it’s still 200 trillion kilometers (120 trillion miles) away,
The planet is one of six now known to orbit the star. Apparently, all the planets have neat, circular orbits, so the system seems to be stable.
This new planet takes 37 days to orbit the star once, and orbits at a distance about 1/6 the distance of the Earth from the Sun. As far as we know, it’s the fourth planet from its star.
