Researchers have discovered the most similar planet yet to Earth, 1,400 lightyears away. Kepler452b orbits its star in 385 days, just 20 days longer than our own year. Its star is just 4% larger, a billion and a half years older, and 20% brighter than the sun, meaning 452b is firmly in the “goldilocks” habitable zone that puts the odds of it being rocky, like Earth, between 5062%.

More Information:
http://www.nasa.gov/pressrelease/nas...
http://www.theguardian.com/science/20...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/sci...

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Researchers have discovered the most similar planet yet to Earth, 1,400 lightyears away. Kepler452b orbits its star in 385 days, just 20 days longer than our own year. Its star is just 4% larger, a billion and a half years older, and 20% brighter than the sun, meaning 452b is firmly in the “goldilocks” habitable zone that puts the odds of it being rocky, like Earth, between 5062%.

Scientist Jeff Coughlin says “this is the first possibly rocky, habitable planet around a solartype star.” All 11 previously discovered exoplanets of similar size and orbit circle smaller, cooler stars.

The planet was found by the Kepler telescope, which searches for possible Earthtwins by observing periodic dips in the brightness of stars as planets pass before them, like the way our moon causes an eclipse here on Earth.

The Kepler telescope stared at a single patch of the Milky Way for four years before its pointing system failed in 2013, but the mission still succeeded in cataloguing more than 4,600 exoplanet candidates. This means astronomers still have huge amounts of data to sort through and make new findings, like this discovery. With 452b, just over 1,000 of the exoplanet candidates have now been confirmed.

20 years ago this fall, the first exoplanet orbiting a distant star was discovered.

And with the successor to Kepler launching in 2017, the pace of discovery is about to increase substantially. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (or TESS), will be able to cover hundreds of times as much sky as the Kepler mission, and will identify prime targets for further examination by the successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope, set for an October 2018 launch.

Astronomers can now project with some degree of confidence that of the 600 stars within 30 lightyears of Earth, there should be roughly 60 potential earthtwins.

So, according to Dr. Didier Queloz, the man who codiscovered that first earthlike planet 20 years ago, “If we keep working so well and so enthusiastically, the issue of life on another planet will be solved.”

Like and share this video to help others on our little rock become aware of this good news. For the video editor Brendan Plank, I’m his brother Bryce, thanks for watching.