Kepler-186f: Most 'Earth-Like' Alien World Discovered

astroengine (1577233) writes "About 500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus lives a star, which, though smaller and redder than the sun, has a planet that may look awfully familiar. With a diameter just 10 percent bigger than Earth's, the newly found world is the first of its size found basking in the benign temperature region around a parent star where water, if it exists, could pool in liquid form (abstract). Scientists on the hunt for Earth's twin are focused on worlds that could support liquid surface water, which may be necessary to brew the chemistry of life. "Kepler-186f is significant because it is the first exoplanet that is the same temperature and the same size (well, ALMOST!) as the Earth," David Charbonneau, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote in an email to Discovery News. "Previously, the exoplanet most like Earth was Kepler-62f, but Kepler-186f is significantly smaller. Now we can point to a star and say, 'There lies an Earth-like planet.'""

Comments

Re:That's nice....

[Immerman]

Nah man, chuck the probe in the opposite direction. It only needs to get 0.011 light years away from the sun to act as the eyepiece of a gravitational telescope focused on the star. Maybe not quite as exciting as sending a probe to another star, but we'll be able to count the pebbles on the planet's surface within a only a few decades.