8 Reasons Why Earth 2.0 Is Super Exciting
Say hello to Kepler 452b.
NASA scientists have announced the discovery of the latest Earth-like exoplanet in our galaxy, and boy is it a corker.
After years of data gathering by the Kepler spacecraft (a space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover exoplanets), scientists have made a breakthrough discovery, Kepler 452b.
Kepler 452b is a quiet little rocky planet orbiting a G-class star called Kepler 452 in the constellation of Cygnus. So why are the scientists jumping up and down about this one?
Because the similarities between Earth and Kepler 452 are starting to look eerily similar. And what do we know that is special about Earth? Life, that's what.
So, if this new planet, which has been dubbed Earth 2.0 by a very excited scientific community, is indeed so similar to Earth, then this could be our best chance yet of discovering that we're not alone in the universe.
8. It Is The Most Similar Planet We’ve Discovered Yet
The discovery of Kepler 542b brings the grand total confirmed exoplanets up to 1,030 and, out of all 1,030 of them, this is by far and away the most similar to Earth.
As we only have one working model of life in the universe, our own, it makes sense to begin the search for extraterrestrial life by sticking to what we know.
We know that life has flourished on a rocky planet with a temperate climate, liquid water, nitrogen and oxygen rich atmosphere and a few billion years of evolution. If most or all of these conditions are in place on the newly discovered Earth 2.0, then it's reasonable to believe that life could potentially take hold there too.
Who knows, perhaps we're the exception to the rule. Perhaps most life exists as conscious clouds of four-dimensional gas that communicates telepathically about the latest experiments of the funnily little Earth-apes ... but we're not very likely to find that, so it's probably best to stick to what we know for the time being.