Kepler finds us a twin.

Kepler Mission Discovers a Near-Twin of Earth Orbiting Sunlike Star
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And yet despite all these revolutionary results, Kepler’s most sought-after quarry—a mirror Earth around another sunlike star—has proved elusive. At least, that is, until now. At a NASA press conference today that also unveiled more than 500 other new candidate planets, Kepler’s mission scientists announced they have finally found and confirmed what looks to be the mission’s long-sought holy grail, a near-twin of Earth called Kepler 452 b. The discovery is detailed in a paper to be published in The Astronomical Journal. “Yes, this is the first small, possibly rocky planet in the habitable zone of a sunlike star,” says lead author Jon Jenkins, an astronomer and 20-year veteran of the Kepler mission at the NASA Ames Research Center. Kepler 452 b is estimated to be 1.6 times the size of our own world, and resides in a clement, life-friendly orbit around a star in the constellation of Cygnus some 1,400 light-years away that is eerily similar to our own sun.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1SGz8O8