m. c. de marco: To invent new life and new civilizations...

Via GMail Web Clips: Space.com reports on a ‘Big’ Discovery: Hypergiant Stars Might Harbor Planets.

Planets might exist around a blazing hot star so big its diameter exceeds the orbit of Mars, astronomers said today.
The star, about 70 times as massive as our Sun, harbors a disk of material that looks strikingly like the planet-forming disks that surround other Sun-like stars.
Another star with 30 solar masses also has a disk, new observations reveal.

This is hot on the tail of a Space.com report on The Growing Habitable Zone:

More recently, scientists have gone back and reexamined their ideas about the possibility of habitable planet forming around red dwarf stars. Despite being the most abundant stars in the galaxy, red dwarfs have traditionally been shunned by scientists as being too small and too dim to support life. Those prejudices are beginning to fade and the recent discovery of a small, rocky world in orbit around a red dwarf 28,000 light-years from our corner of the solar system has refueled speculations that these stars might harbor planets with life.