Last week, scientists discovered Kepler-452b, described as “Earth’s cousin.” A planet with heat, water and manageable gravity, it might be home to the first known aliens in the galaxy!
On July 23, NASA announced to the world that the Kepler space telescope, which has been searching for habitable planets since 2009, has located a planet which resembles our own Earth in several significant ways.
The “super-Earth” is described as Earth’s “bigger, older cousin,” and is estimated to be the sixth-most Earth-like exoplanet we have so far discovered.
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Kepler-452b is 60% bigger than our home planet, and orbits a star very similar to the Sun. One orbit around this star (a calendar year) is 385 days, and gravity is estimated to be around double of what we experience here on Earth (so no paper airplane fun for the alien children).
Before we start packing our bags though, it’s worth noting that scientists are still not sure whether the planet is solid or gaseous, although there is said to be a 49-62% chance of it having a rocky surface.
Kepler-452b is imagined, as depicted in this artist’s rendering from SETI Institute, as a rocky planet with active volcanoes, and — most importantly — the right conditions for liquid water.
So if the planet is solid, and if there is water on its surface, alien life forms could actually exist on this distant planet!
So how do we get to Kepler-452b?
Humanity being what it is, naturally the first question many asked was, “How do we get there?” More bad news, as there’s not actually great hopes that anyone reading this will live long enough to see an expedition mounted (and even if they did, they wouldn’t live long enough to survive the journey).
Kepler-452b is 1,400 light-years away, and a potential trip with our current technology would take, oh, about 26 million years. Cancel your weekend plans!
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And since we don’t yet actually know whether or not this planet is solid (skepticists are predicting it’ll turn out to be gaseous like Neptune, or have no water like Venus), it’s probably too early to get our hopes up anyway.
Whatever happens though, we’re predicting a boom in sci-fi novels set on Kepler-452b: perhaps a brave group of volunteers set out for the planet, and thousands of years pass before their distant descendants reach their destination — with no memory of Earth, or humanity as we know it…