NASA announced on Thursday that scientists have discovered a planet similar in size to Earth that orbits in a zone conducive to supporting life.
It’s not clear whether the planet discovered is rocky or has water, but NASA described it as “Earth’s bigger, older cousin,” according to CNN.
Earth’s bigger, older cousin! @NASAKepler discovers new distant planet that’s near-Earth-size: http://t.co/kEdzbbFEqE pic.twitter.com/hoog1ZsdNs
— NASA (@NASA) July 23, 2015
NASA scientists said that the planet, Kepler-452b, is the most similar planet to Earth that they’ve found. Kepler-452b also orbits a star similar to the sun.
“Today, Earth is a little less lonely,” Jon Jenkins, a researcher with NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope project, said at the press conference, according to CNN.
“The earth? Oh, the earth will be gone in just a few seconds.”
To which Donald Trump immediately responded:
So the similarity is it is the smallest exo-planet yet discovered? We don’t know if it is rocky or gaseous. It is bigger than the Earth. What is the similarity they are talking about exactly?
This is really amazing stuff. I am not a scientist, but my son is in aerospace engineering and they are “over the moon” (please forgive the pun) with excitement about the future possibilities. Yeah for science!
Earth probably could have gone onto Ancestry-dot-com and found this info for a lot less money.