Forty light-years from Earth, a rocky world called LHS 1140b has quietly assembled the conditions long associated with life: solid ground, temperatures hospitable to liquid water, and now a confirmed atmosphere. Announced Thursday in the journal Science, the discovery does not claim life exists there, but rather that the universe may be far more generous with the ingredients than we once dared hope. In finding one such world, astronomers suggest they have glimpsed a pattern — that rocky planets capable of holding onto their skies may be common throughout the galaxy.