Gliese 581 G, eat your heart out. There's a new Earth 2 on the horizon!

When it comes to the search for life on other planets (or other planets capable of supporting our life), there have been many starts and stops.  However, NASA’s Kepler Telescope has been the biggest and best dog in that hunt for Earth-like planets in our solar system, and it appears that Kepler has struck again.  Kepler has discovered other Earth-like planets, including Gliese 581 G, but now the most Earth-like of Earth-like planets has been uncovered.  Dubbed Kepler 22-B, it has the perfect combination of star strength, distance from the star, positioning, and size to be as close to Earth as we may ever find.

The planet is right smack dab in the middle of the Goldilocks Zone, where the temperature and position is just right to support human life.  It’s not too hot or too cold and the year is 290 days long (almost like our year), but the planet is a bit large (2.4 times the size of earth) and it may be covered entirely in water.  Still, it’s a glorious 72 degrees, so just think of it as a cruise planet.

“This is a phenomenal discovery in the course of human history,” said astronomer Geoff Marcy of University of California, Berkeley.  “This discovery shows that we Homo sapiens are straining our reach into the universe to find planets that remind us of home.  We are almost there.”

Tags: new earth, earth-like planet discovered, near-earth planet discovered 600 light years away, Kepler 22-B, Kepler telescope, NASA, Goldilocks Zone, Kepler telescope discovers Earth-like planet, near-earth planet discovered, astronomy, planets, the universe, science, Geoff March, University of California Berkeley

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