Astronomers have located a rocky exoplanet about 25,000 light-years away, possibly the most distant Earth-like planet found so far. Scientist Antonio Herrera Martin described in The Astronomical Journal how he and his team analyzed gravitational microlensing to make the discovery.

Nine out of 10 companies lack the skilled workers to run effective social media campaigns, and fewer than half are taking steps to address their talent shortfall, writes Avi Levine of the Digital Professional Institute. "If you're not taking proactive steps to attract, retain and train top digital talent with your company, you risk falling behind," Levine writes.

Social media company Postano is touting an analytics dashboard designed to give marketers insight into how hashtag campaigns are performing. "A lot of tools have an overview of the brand on social. We want to give a view of how a hashtag is performing, from the fans and from the brand," Postano's Justin Garrity says.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has spotted eight new Earth-like planets in the "Goldilocks" habitable zone of the universe. As they join the hundreds of planets detected by Kepler, astronomers are speculating what to do next as they continue searching for worlds like our own. Scientists shared their findings and ideas at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Kepler will get some help in 2017 when the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is launched, tasked with finding Goldilocks planets closer to Earth.

Astronomers are making plenty of headway in finding new planets, but none have been at all Earthlike. Progress in astronomical developments were described at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington last week. However, some astronomers caution that the field is particularly vulnerable to hype.