Scientists using NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope have found a planet beyond the solar system that is a close match to Earth.
The planet, which is about 60 percent bigger than Earth, is located about 1,400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, the scientists told a news conference on Thursday. With the discovery of this planet there are now 1,030 confirmed planets in total.
According to NASA, the newly discovered planet which is being called Kepler-452b is the smallest planet that has been discovered till now orbiting in the habitable zone. A habitable zone consists of the area around a star where liquit water can collect on the surface of an orbiting planet. That means the planet, which is 1,400 light-years away, could offer a glimpse into the Earth's apocalyptic future, scientists said.
NASA also posted about the revelation on its Kepler Mission Twitter page called 'NASA Kepler'-
While similarly sized planets have been found before, the latest one, known as Kepler-452b, is circling a star that isvery similar but older than the sun at a distance about the same as Earth's orbit.
"It's great progress in finding a planet like Earth that issimilar in size and temperature around a sun-like star," JeffCoughlin, Kepler research scientist at the SETI Institute inMountain View, California, told reporters on a conference call.
Based on its size, scientists believe Kepler-452b is rocky and Earth-like and positioned at the right distance for liquidsurface water, which is believed to be necessary for life. The research will be published in an upcoming issue of The Astronomical Journal.
The planet's star is four percent more massive than the Sun and 10 percent brighter. If the planet is rocky, and scientists believe that it has a better than even chance of being just that, then it could be in the midst of a fearful scenario, as the heat from its dying star evaporates Kepler 452b's lakes and oceans.
"If Kepler 452b is indeed a rocky planet, its location vis-a-vis its star could mean that it is just entering a runaway greenhouse phase of its climate history," said Doug Caldwell, a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute scientist working on the Kepler mission.
"The increasing energy from its aging sun might be heating the surface and evaporating any oceans. The water vapor would be lost from the planet forever," he added. "Kepler 452b could be experiencing now what the Earth will undergo more than a billion years from now, as the Sun ages and grows brighter."
The Kepler mission launched in 2009 to search for exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, particularly those about the size of Earth or smaller.
