NASA just found 'Earth 2.0'

By Matt Swider



Earth could become uninhabitable at any moment due to global warming, nuclear annihilation or having to deal with another Transformers movie, but NASA just discovered a distant cousin.

Meet Kepler-452b, the planet the agency calls "Earth 2.0." It was discovered by NASA's floating observatory found orbiting in the 'habitable zone' of constellation Cygnus.

That's significant because it means it has the same temperature as Earth and is situated in an area around its star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet, according to NASA.

At a distance of 1,400 light-years away, it's too far away to travel to right now. But it's promising to hear it does spin around a G2-type star, the same stellar classification as our sun.

It was sitting there the entire time

Although Kepler-452b was only recently discovered, the Earth-like planet is actually 60 per cent bigger than our home, officially giving it super-Earth-size status.

It's also orbiting a sun, Kepler-452, that is 6 billion years old, which is 1.5 billion years older than our Sun. Bust out the intergalactic shades, because it still shines bright. The alien sun is 20% brighter and has a diameter 10% larger than our home star.

Despite this, the Kepler-452b orbit takes 385 days, or only 5 per cent longer than Earth's orbit. Fingers crossed the 20 extra days are in the summer.

NASA says that the planet's the mass and composition have yet to be determined, but that it's "a good chance of being rocky." This makes the "Earth 2.0" nickname that much more meaningful.