Which Planet Is Closest In Size To The Earth?

If any of the planet-ending tropes of sci-fi come up to pass in real life, we could now have a place to point our not-yet-real starships toward. NASA announced on Thursday that it has constitute the first near-Earth-size planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star that is like to our own sun.
Scientists don't yet know for certain if the planet spotted past the Kepler infinite telescope, dubbed Kepler-452b, can support life. Information technology'southward in a region where temperatures are right for liquid water and is merely about sixty percent larger than Globe, giving it a decent chance of being rocky like our ain planet. NASA scientists besides expect that Kepler-452b would have a slightly thicker temper than Earth and probably still have active volcanoes, making it a pretty lively place even if it doesn't take life.
A yr on the new planet is simply 20 days longer than a yr here and while its star is quite a long trek from home for humans at 1,400 calorie-free-years abroad in the constellation Cygnus, its sun is well-nigh the same size and temperature as our ain. It's virtually 1.5 billion years older than our sun at half dozen billion years, but information technology has virtually the aforementioned temperature and mass.
Kepler-452b, Earth's 'cousin,' in more detail (pictures)
See all photosThe age of this afar solar system is also important because it provides plenty of time for life in a form like to something like what we're familiar with to develop. In fact, Kepler-452b has had more than than a billion-year caput start on the Earth.
"In my mind this is indeed the closest matter we have to another planet like the Globe...to some other place that someone else might call domicile," said Jon Jenkins, who leads Kepler data analysis at NASA. "Plants would photosynthesize merely perfectly fine. It would feel a lot like dwelling (in terms of) the sunshine you would experience."
There is one difference between Earth and Kepler-452b that distant future visitors would surely notice, however. The newly known planet has gravity nearly twice what we're used to, but Jenkins suspects that hypothetical human being colonists would be able to withstand and adjust to being heavier.
"Astronauts find that gravity sucks after coming home (from a mission in microgravity)," added NASA's John Grunsfeld. "You experience actually heavy, but your torso responds to that."
Kepler has been hobbled past the failure of a couple of its four gyroscope-like reaction wheels a few years back and is no longer in top planet-hunting form, simply scientists take connected to analyze the reams of data sent back and make new discoveries.
Kepler information has surfaced other near Globe-size planets in the habitable zone in the past. In fact, Thursday's announcement of Kepler-452b was also accompanied by news of 12 other new planet candidates near Earth size, and in orbit in their star's habitable zone. Of those, nine orbit stars are similar to our dominicus. These are but planet candidates that have yet to be confirmed like Kepler-452, which is the first confirmed planet spotted that hits the triumvirate of being the right size in the right identify, and is besides around a star that is the right size (at least from an Globe-centric perspective).
In recent years, the Kepler mission has helped paint a more than consummate motion picture of the universe, which it at present seems clear is totally littered with planets. Amid the hundreds and hundreds spied, at that place are others that appear comparable to Earth, and even to the far-off imaginary planets of the " universe.
The discovery of a planet potentially capable of supporting life is, of course, not the same as finding a planet harboring life. The adjacent generation of footing-based and infinite telescopes will go a long way toward being able to identify the biosignatures -- things that ofttimes get forth with life like oxygen, carbon dioxide or methane -- of a "breathing" planet when they begin to come online in the next few years.
The seven confirmed exoplanets near likely to host life (pictures)
See all photosWhich Planet Is Closest In Size To The Earth?,
Source: https://www.cnet.com/science/kepler-another-earth-nasa-planet/
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