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We found a new planet that is just like Earth

My fellow space travellers! Get used to hearing a lot more about Kepler 452b, as it might be our next home once we are done with this one.

Hopefully that won’t be the case for many more centuries, but just in case we need to make a fast get-away, the clever folks over on NASA’s Kepler Space telescope science team have made a rather astonishing discovery.

The team found a planet, called Kepler 452b, that is the most Earth-like planet every discovered.

“On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0.”

How does our potentially new neighbourhood compare with the one we live on now? Well, for starters Kepler 452b is 60 per cent larger than Earth…and that is pretty much all that we know. From previous research we also know that there is a good chance that it is made up of rocky material.

Since we know it’s size and it’s distance from its parent star Kepler-452, we can work out that it has a 385-day orbit, and days are only 5 per cent longer when compared to Earth. But the similarities don’t stop there: Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger.

It’s a perfect fit!

There is a slight problem though. The Kepler-452 system, where the planet is located, is 1 400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Light travels at 300 000km per second, so Kepler is 1.32447398 × 10 to the power of 16 kilometers away.

Not your average Sunday afternoon drive.

“We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth’s evolving environment,” explained said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

“It’s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth. That’s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet.”

[Image – NASA]

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