Astronomers have found bigger earth, just like that of ours, with not so different environment for humans to live.
Inching ahead on their quest for what they call Earth 2.0, astronomers from NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft announced Thursday that they had found what might be one of the closest analogues to our world yet.
It is a planet a little more than 1 1/2 times as big in radius as Earth. Known as Kepler 452b, it circles a sunlike star in an orbit that takes 385 days. This puts it firmly in the “Goldilocks” habitable zone where the temperatures are lukewarm and suitable for liquid water on the surface – if it has a surface.
Some of the things you must know about the ‘Other Earth’:
Scientists have named it Kepler 452b
It’s a potentially rocky planet that circles its star exactly at the same distance Earth orbits sun
It consists of volcanoes, oceans and sunshine like that of Earth
Gravity on Kepler 452b is twice that of Earth
One year is not of 365 but 385 days
Planet was detected by US Agency’s Kepler Space Telescope, which is hunting for other world since 2009
Kepler 452b’s star is 1.5 billion years older, 4% more massive and 10% brighter than our sun
It is 1,400 light years away from the our planet
The Kepler mission has cost NASA about $600m
It’s receiving about 10% more energy from its star than Earth gets from Sun
With inputs from ndtv.com
