Everybody stop recycling and start wasting water. NASA has some great news.
A recently discovered planet called Kepler-452b is similar to earth in many respects, so much so that it has been dubbed the closest thing yet to “Earth 2.0.” So it looks like we have somewhere to go once we’re through trashing this dump.
“This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
To clarify, we’re talking about a planet just like Earth, not the short-lived NBC sci-fa drama from the mid-1990s, Earth 2.
The planet was discovered by the Kepler Spacecraft, which was launched in 2009.
Researchers are able to determine the size of the exoplanets and their distance from the star by carefully observing the amount of light they obfuscate when passing between their host star and Earth.
Despite the new planet’s similarity to our own, it looks like we won’t be moving there anytime soon. Since it would take 1,400 light-years to reach Kepler-452b, I guess you’d better disregard my call to stop recycling.
But despite its distance, there is still much we can learn from the planet.
We can project what will become of Kepler-452b as it eventually becomes inhospitable to life, and use that model to predict the fate of our own rocky planet home.
(Source: The Daily Dot)