Saturday, May 3, 2014

Kepler Has Found the First Earth-Sized Exoplanet in a Habitable Zone!

Kepler Has Found the First Earth-Sized Exoplanet in a Habitable Zone!:

Artist's rendering of Kepler-186f (Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/Caltech)

Artist’s rendering of the Earth-sized Kepler-186f (Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/Caltech)
It’s truly a “eureka” moment for Kepler scientists: the first rocky Earth-sized world has been found in a star’s habitable “Goldilocks” zone, the narrow belt where liquid water could readily exist on a planet’s surface without freezing solid or boiling away. And while it’s much too soon to tell if this really is a “twin Earth,” we can now be fairly confident that they do in fact exist.

The newly-confirmed extrasolar planet has been dubbed Kepler-186f. It is the fifth and outermost planet discovered orbiting the red dwarf star Kepler-186, located 490 light-years away. Kepler-186f completes one orbit around its star every 130 days, just within the outer edge of the system’s habitable zone.

The findings were made public today, April 17, during a teleconference hosted by NASA.

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