New Planet Discovered Might Support Life, Says Scientist

Scientist have claimed to have confirmed that the New Planet as known as Kepler 22-b discovered 2 years ago is habitable and Earth-like life friendly.

Earth-like planet, the name given to Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C. It is the closest confirmed planet yet to one like ours — an “Earth 2.0″, says a team at NASA.

What is a Light year? How far is it?

For readers, who want to know the figures behind the calculation of Light year. Firstly, A Light year is used to measure distance on galactic level.

One light-year is equal to:

• exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (about 9.5 Pm)
• about 5,878,625,373,183.608 miles (about 6 trillion miles)
• about 63,241.1 astronomical units
• about 0.306601 parsecs
• exactly 31,557,600 light-seconds

“We have now got good planet confirmation with Kepler 22b. We are certain that it is in the habitable zone and if it has a surface it ought to have a nice temperature,” Bill Borucki, Kepler space telescope”s principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Centre, was quoted as saying.

Science.Nasa.gov reports Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters, as saying, “This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin”

Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away. While the planet is larger than Earth, its orbit of 290 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our world. The planet’s host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type, although it is slightly smaller and cooler.

“Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet,” said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who led the team that discovered Kepler-22b. “The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third transit over the 2010 holiday season.”

If you ask me, People are dreaming of one day leaving this Planet that Almighty gifted us and are trying to find a way to inhabit some other planet in some other solar system.

I don’t see that happening ever in Mankind’s history.