5th December 2011
Nasa’s Kepler Mission has discovered an Earth size planet orbiting in the habitable zone around its host star. It is the smallest exoplanet found that orbits in an area where temperatures would allow liquid water to flow on its surface.
The newly named Kepler 22-b is 600 light years away and has a radius around 2.4 times larger than Earth’s. It takes 290 days to orbit its host star which is similar to our own sun and models suggest that the planet’s temperature could be around 22C (72F). At this point the planet’s composition is unknown, if it is rocky with areas of liquid water it could possibly host life.
Kepler program scientist Douglas Hudgins said “This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin, Kepler's results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA's science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe."
It is the first of Kepler’s 54 habitable zone candidates that were initially reported in February 2011 to be confirmed. The NASA mission also announced that they have found more than 1,000 new exoplanet candidates bringing the total number of candidates to a staggering 2,326, of these 207 are thought to be similar in size to Earth.
The Kepler Mission uses a space based telescope which detects the minute amount of dimming that occurs when a planet passes in front of its host star.
www.solarsystemquick.com
