NASA detects a planet with life as Earth

The American Aerospace Agency (NASA) announced on December 5 that the space program Kepler has confirmed that a planet is in the "possible life" zone due to the distance of the planet and a similar star. like the sun just enough to make the planet's surface not too hot or too cold, allowing water storage.

>>>Kepler spacecraft finds new 'super-earth'

The newly discovered planet, called Kepler-22b , is the smallest planet to date found in the area of ​​possible life. Kepler-22b is 2.4 times larger in diameter than the earth.

Now scientists do not know the surface of this planet is rock, gas or liquid mixture. However, the discovery of Kepler-22b is considered a step forward in the discovery of planet-like planets.

Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years from Earth. The planet orbits a star like the sun in an orbit of 290 days. This star belongs to group G, which is equivalent to the sun, although a bit smaller and has a lower temperature.

Earlier studies have found the existence of many planets of the same size as the Earth, located in areas where there can be life. However, subsequent studies did not allow this to be confirmed.

In February 2011, the Kepler space program identified 54 cosmic objects in the area of ​​possible life.

These objects can only be identified as a planet when scientists observe at least three times it passes through the starlight region. Kepler-22b is the first case confirmed in this issue.

Scientists in the Kepler program used telescopes placed on Earth and the Spitzer space telescope to track cosmic objects that could be planets discovered by the spacecraft Kepler.

According to NASA, out of 2326 cosmic objects that could be the planet Kepler has discovered so far, there are 207 cases of approximate Earth-sized glass, 680 "super-large" ones compared to the earth, 1181 schools. The case is the size of Neptune, 203 cases are on par with Jupiter.

The result of the Kepler program also shows that in the Galaxy galaxy there are many planets about one to four times the size of the earth.

Only in the period from February 2011 until now, the number of possible planetary objects with the approximate earth size has increased by more than 200%.

NASA scientists believe that this rapid increase shows the potential of the Kepler program to find extraterrestrial life.