Kepler finds potentially habitable exoplanet 2.4x size of earth
December 5, 2011
Should’ve gotten to posting this earlier today but I was waaay too busy.
Very exciting news in the science world today- NASA’s Kepler mission has been very busy lately, finding exoplanets left and right. Problem is, those observations have to be followed-up and duplicated by other telescopes, usually ground-based. Thus, it takes a while to fully confirm the existence of an exoplanet discovered by Kepler. Finally though, they’ve found one that is close to earth’s size, and orbits a star similar to our sun within its habitable zone. It’s not quite the “holy grail” of planet hunting because the planet is 2.4 times the size of earth, but it’s getting us ever-closer to the discovery of a true earth-twin. This is awesome. It’s only a matter of time…
Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
For more, check out this article on Space.com, or this article on Discovery News.
