Despite all the prospects of having another habitable planet like the Earth in sci-fi movies, little support for the prospect from the scientific community has arisen in the past few decades. That is, until Dec 5, 2011 when NASA announced the presence of an Earth-like planet located 600 lightyears away that orbits a sun-like star in a “so-called ‘Goldilocks’ zone where water can exist in liquid form on the surface and conditions may be favorable for life as it is known on Earth.” (- CNET News)
The planet has a radius that is roughly 2.4 times that of the Earth, with a orbit period of approximately 290 days, and three possibilities of surface temperatures coming in at -11 degrees celsius, 22 degrees celsius, or 460 degrees celsius. Evidently, there are still many problems and questions that arise with the discovery of the planet that we cannot answer at the moment, hence it is still too early to cheer or fright for the discovery of alien life.
Despite the lack of information on the many features of the planet, such as the mass and composition, the prospect of finding a planet so similar to our planet calls for great excitement. More importantly, NASA has announced with the discovery of Keppler – 22b that there are 48 planet candidates that are in their star’s habitable zone, with Keppler – 22b being the first one confirmed. This means that there is a high liklihood that more planets will be confirmed to be in a habitable zone in the near future.
Truly, it is amazing to even think about the idea that we could be at the start of discovering outer life or even possible resources from outer space. Even more so, we should be awed by the development of human technology in the past few decades, as we are now capable of distinguishing many features of a planet that lies as far as 600 light years away.