Today, NASA announced that scientists have found an Earth-like planet, Kepler-452b about 1,400 light years away from us. This new Earth-twin exists at such a distance from a star Kepler 452, where water could exist. This discovery (and more) is a result of about analysis of four years’ data from the Kepler Space Telescope which has been looking for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars similar to our Sun.
Kepler-452b is the first one to be confirmed as a planets and its star possesses an interesting similarity to our Sun. It is just 12 percent brighter than our Sun and four percent heavier. This Earth-like planet Kepler-452b orbits at about same distance as Earth, taking about 385 days to complete one full revolution.
Let’s take a quick look at what we know about the Earth 2.0 so far:
- It is about 60% larger than Earth 1.0 and the closest exoplanet so far.
- It is at a distance of 1,400 light years from Earth.
- It is rocky, thus confirming a sold surface.
- It orbits its very own star named Kepler 452 at a distance near-about same as Earth’s orbital distance.
- It completes one revolution is every 385 days.
- Earth 2.0’s star is about 6 billion years old i.e. about 1.5 billion years older than our Sun.
During the long-awaited announcement, NASA said that it right now they don’t know if there’s life on Kepler-452b. The Kepler data analysis head said:
Stay tuned with fossBytes we’ll keep you updated with the news of Earth 2.0.
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