Earth's 'Bigger, Older Cousin': Scientists Hail Discovery Of Potentially Habitable Planet
PASADENA (CBSLA.com) — Earth has a "bigger, older cousin" about 1,400 light years away, what officials say is the first planet known to be in a habitable zone orbiting a sun-like star, scientists said Thursday.
Researchers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory say Kepler-452b takes just slightly longer than Earth - 385 days, to be exact - to orbit its parent star, and is distant enough from the star to make for conditions that could support liquid water on its surface.
Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone of a G2-type star, like our sun, according to NASA.
Estimated to be about 60 percent larger than Earth, Kepler-452b is 20 percent brighter but has the same temperature and is in the constellation Cygnus, according to NASA.
Derek Malik, managing editor of SPACE.com, told KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO the gravity on Kepler-452 is roughly twice as much as our planet.
"Kinda tough walking around if you just arrived for a visit, but as NASA's John Glenn so told us, after a while, you'd get used to it," said Malik.
Scientists believe Kepler-452b is a rocky planet but the "ingredients and conditions" there are unknown.
Since its launch in 2009, the Kepler spacecraft has spotted nearly 4,700 exoplanet candidates, over 1,000 of which subsequently were confirmed to be planets, according to NASA.
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