It has yet to be determined if any other planet other than Earth is able to sustain life, but Eric Mack of CNET reports that NASA scientists might have found one. Researchers announced that they have found an Earth-like planet orbiting a sun much like our own about 1,400 light years away.
The planet was spotted with the use of the Kepler space telescope and has been named Kepler-452b for now, and it is reportedly in a zone where temperatures are fit for liquid water to be present. It is supposedly about 60 percent larger than Earth.
The planet is located within the constellation Cygnus, and the sun it orbits is nearly the same temperature and mass as our own despite being about 1.5 billion years older.
“In my mind this is indeed the closest thing we have to another planet like the Earth,” said Jon Jenkins, who leads Kepler data analysis at NASA. “Plants would photosynthesize just perfectly fine. It would feel a lot like home (in terms of) the sunshine you would experience.”
The biggest difference between Earth and Kepler-452b despite the obvious ability to sustain life at the moment is the fact that gravity is nearly twice than what it is on Earth on Kepler-452b.
While the Kepler mission has helped reveal many planets throughout the universe in recent years, it is pretty spectacular that NASA scientists might have found what could be another potential life-bearing planet.
