Let it roll off your tongue: exoplanet.
That's the new buzzword, the one you're going to hear a lot about in the next few weeks and decades. NASA have confirmed the existence of what very well could be a habitable planet elsewhere in the universe. (The word exoplanet is short for extrasolar planet, meaning one that is outside our own Solar System.)
The planet is Kepler-22b. It is 2.4 times as big as Earth and orbits its "sun," which is very similar in size to our Sun, once every 290 days. The temperature very near the planet's surface is estimated at 72 degrees Fahrenheit, or 22 Celsius. (The average near-surface temperature of Earth is 59 Fahrenheit, or 15 Celsius.)
NASA confirmed the planet's existence through data collected by the Kepler space telescope, which has discovered more than 2,300 more potential planets since launching in 2009. Kepler has the largest camera ever sent out of Earth's orbit, with a staggering 95-megapixel capability, so it sees an entire night sky's worth of images that other telescopes just can't bring into focus.
This is not the first exoplanet to be thought habitable, of course. European astronomers have announced the discovery of two others, although those orbit stars that smaller and cooler than the Sun, so the planets are thought to be less likely candidates than Kepler-22b.
One thing that astronomers are not yet sure of is the composition of the exoplanet's surface: Is it gaseous, liquid, or rocky?
There's one way to find out for sure, and that is to go there. But be warned: Kepler-22b is 600 light-years away. Using current technology, you wouldn't make it there in time to appreciate anything you discover. One of your descendants would, though. Even traveling at light speed, the journey would take 600 years.
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