CHICAGO - EARTH-LIKE planets with life-sustaining conditions are spinning around stars in our galactic neighbourhood, US astrophysicists say. They just haven't been found yet.

'There are something like a few dozen solar-type stars within something like 30 light years of the sun, and I would think that a good number of those - perhaps half of them have Earth-like planets,' Alan Boss told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AASS).

'So I think there is a very good chance that we will find some Earth-like planets within 10, 20 or 30 light years of the Sun,' the astrophysicist from the Carnegie Institution for Science told his AAAS colleagues meeting here since Thursday.

One light year equals the distance light travels in one year at the speed of 300,000km per second, or 9.46 trillion km.

Mr Boss is convinced that the Earth-sized planets could be found either by the Kepler space telescope US space agency NASA plans to launch on March 5, or by the French-European telescope-equipped COROT satellite that has been in orbit since 2006.

'I will be absolutely astonished if Kepler or COROT didn't find any earth-like planets, because basically we are finding them already,' Mr Boss told a press conference Saturday when asked why he felt so confident. -- AFP