8 Reasons Why Earth 2.0 Is Super Exciting

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.