Quote:
Originally Posted by troutman
New Discovery: An Alien Solar System With Two Earth-Sized Worlds
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro...same_star.html
Scanning the heavens, you might very well miss the star Kepler-62. It’s a rather typical star, slightly smaller, cooler, and more orange than the Sun, much like tens of billions of other stars in our galaxy. But it holds a surprise: It’s orbited by at least five planets… and two of them are Earth-sized and orbit the star in its habitable zone!
The two planets, called Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f, are both bigger than Earth, but not by much; they are 1.6 and 1.4 times the Earth’s diameter, respectively. Kepler-62e orbits the star every 122 days, while Kepler-62f, farther out, takes about 267 days. Given the temperature and size of the parent star, this means that both planets are inside the zone around the star where water on the surface could be a liquid
|
These look like great candidates to be habitable. It is too bad they are so far away (1200 light years). Hopefully we can find some similar ones closer to Sol, so we can go adventuring some day.
The folks at the
Planetary Habitability Laboratory have updated their comparison of the best candidates for habitability: (Behind tag for size.)