The illustration represents one possible appearance for the exoplanet – scientists do not know whether the it has oceans and continents like Earth.
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And yet despite all these revolutionary results, Kepler’s most sought-after quarry-a mirror Earth around another sunlike star-has proved elusive.
“It is the closest thing that we have to another place that somebody else might call home”, said Jon Jenkins, the lead data analyst from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
The discovery was made through NASA’s Kepler telescope.
While similarly-sized planets have been found before, the latest one, known as Kepler-4-5-2-b, is circling a star that is very similar to, but older than the sun at a distance about the same as Earth’s orbit. Of these, nine orbit stars that are similar to our sun in size and temperature.
“Today the Earth is a little less lonely because there’s a new kid on the block”, Jenkins said during a news conference.
To help confirm the finding and better determine the properties of the Kepler-452 system, the team conducted ground-based observations at the University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory, the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mt Hopkins, Arizona, and the W M Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Gliese-832c, another promising Goldilocks world, was thought to be the most Earth-like of this elite club just past year. That close-to-Earth-size planet, Kepler-186f, also was in the habitable zone of its star. The star is the same surface temperature and type as the sun, a G2 star. His discovery “forever alters our view of the universe”, according to NASA. “And I really emphasize the ‘so far.’ “.
Scientists have identified a “close cousin” to Earth that’s orbiting a sun-like star and might harbor life.
Millions of Chinese are excited by the administration’s discovery of a planet that it says has a “substantial opportunity” to host life, but this has been tempered by the realisation that they will not be able to visit Kepler-452b because it is unsuitable for human survival, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. As for age and size, the planet is about 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than Earth, and 60 percent larger in diameter than our home planet.
The first exoplanets found orbiting around a sun that seemed to be quite like our very own sun have been found to be rocky.
Twelve of the new planet candidates have diameters between one to two times that of Earth, and orbit in their star’s habitable zone. Its position, and its proximity to its own sun, have given hope that this could be a planet with life. That’s important because it makes the planet ripe, potentially, for liquid water on the surface.
He explained that a super-dense atmosphere could serve like a super-insulator, hot-boxing a planet that would otherwise be cool enough for water and life.
It is 1,400 light-years away from our planet in the constellation Cygnus and is believed to be rocky with active volcanoes.
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“So pack your bags, it’s a long trip”, joked Jenkins.
