A 'major milestone' in search for Earth's twin

NASA's Kepler telescope confirms first alien planet found in habitable zone

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>>> story of course has to do with our current earth but we learned today there may be another one out there. astronomers report the discovery of what they are calling an earth-like planet 600 light years away from here. while it is very big it looks like us and they believe it has a temperate climate, perhaps in the 70s all the time. now imagine what we could do with this new place. it could be our chance to start fresh. a place where the chicago cubs always win, where there is always free parking, productive lawmakers and uninterrupted cell phone service. it's called kepler 22-b. while we can work on the name it doesn't hurt to dream.

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By Mike Wall

updated 12/6/2011 1:43:46 PM ET

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first alien world in its host star's habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist — and found more than 1,000 new exoplanet candidates, researchers announced Monday.

The new finds bring the Kepler space telescope's total haul to 2,326 potential planets in its first 16 months of operation. These discoveries, if confirmed, would quadruple the current tally of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system, which recently topped 700.

The potentially habitable alien world, a first for Kepler, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one that could conceivably harbor life, scientists said.

NASA / Ames / JPL-Caltech

This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-22, a star system containing the first "habitable zone" planet discovered by NASA's Kepler mission.

"We're getting closer and closer to discovering the so-called 'Goldilocks planet,'" Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said during a news conference on Monday.

The newfound planet in the habitable zone is called Kepler-22b. It is located about 600 light-years away, orbiting a sunlike star.

Kepler-22b's radius is 2.4 times that of Earth, and the two planets have roughly similar temperatures. If the alien planet's greenhouse effect operates similarly to how it does on Earth, the average surface temperature on Kepler-22b would be 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius).

Hunting down alien planets
The $600 million Kepler observatory launched in March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size alien planets in the habitable zone of their parent stars, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, might be able to exist.

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Kepler detects alien planets using what's called the "transit method." It searches for tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet transits — or crosses in front of — the star from Earth's perspective, blocking a fraction of the star's light.

Cosmic Log: Scientists put alien planets in pigeonholes

The finds graduate from "candidates" to full-fledged planets after follow-up observations confirm that they're not false alarms. This process, which is usually done with large, ground-based telescopes, can take about a year.

The Kepler team released data from its first 13 months of operation back in February, announcing that the instrument had detected 1,235 planet candidates, including 54 in the habitable zone and 68 that are roughly Earth-size.

Now the total has risen to 2,326 planetary candidates. That figure includes 207 that are approximately Earth-size. More of them, 680, are a bit larger than our planet, falling into the "super-Earth" category. The total number of candidate planets in the habitable zones of their stars is now 48 — which represents a decrease because the Kepler team has tightened up its criteria for habitability.

To date, just over two dozen of these potential exoplanets have been confirmed, but Kepler scientists have estimated that at least 80 percent of the instrument's discoveries should end up being the real deal.

More discoveries to come
The newfound 1,094 planet candidates are the fruit of Kepler's labors during its first 16 months of science work, from May 2009 to September 2010. And they won't be the last of the prolific instrument's discoveries.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement.

Mission scientists still need to analyze data from the last two years and on into the future. Kepler will be making observations for a while yet to come; its nominal mission is set to end in November 2012, but the Kepler team is preparing a proposal to extend the instrument's operations for another year or more.

Kepler's finds should only get more exciting as time goes on, researchers say.

"We're pushing down to smaller planets and longer orbital periods," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at Ames.

To flag a potential planet, the instrument generally needs to witness three transits. Planets that make three transits in just a few months must be pretty close to their parent stars; as a result, many of the alien worlds Kepler spotted early on have been blisteringly hot places that aren't great candidates for harboring life as we know it.

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Given more time, however, a wealth of more distantly orbiting — and perhaps more Earthlike — exoplanets should open up to Kepler. If intelligent aliens were studying our solar system with their own version of Kepler, after all, it would take them three years to detect our home planet.

"We are getting very close," Batalha said. "We are homing in on the truly Earth-size, habitable planets."

You can follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Interactive: The search for extrasolar planets

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Explainer: Six frontiers for alien life

20th Century Fox

In "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a remake of the 1951 science-fiction classic, an alien named Klaatu (played by Keanu Reeves, right) visits Earth to save us humans from ourselves. The story is a work of science fiction, with the emphasis on fiction, says Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute and a technical adviser on the film. For example, to be able to detect a dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and come save us from global warming, an alien that could travel at light speed would have to reside no more than about 50 light-years away. "I doubt that there are any aliens that close," Shostak says. And even if there are, "they might not care about our problems."

Scientific accuracy aside, Shostak says the film could hook a new generation on space science, just as the original film helped direct his career, which is dedicated to the search for E.T. As kids stumble out of the theater, they might ask, do aliens exist?

Click the "Next" arrow above to explore the evidence, from the scientifically plausible to the incredible.
With so many stars, alien life is probable

NASA

Shostak notes that there is no direct proof for any life beyond Earth, but the universe is home to a lot of stars. And as research over the past decade has shown, perhaps at least 50 percent of those stars harbor planets. Shostak estimates there are 1 trillion planets in the Milky Way alone. "Surely some of them have undergone what Earth has undergone and developed life, and eventually what we call sentient life," he says. The argument, he notes, is simply one of probability. "If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, or for that matter in the universe, then we are truly a miracle," he says. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a cluster of young stars in the Milky Way.
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Water worlds abound in our solar system

NASA/jpl/space Science Institute

Water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. And liquid water, it turns out, is fairly common in our local solar system. For example, evidence is mounting that liquid water may flow underneath the surface of Mars. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, appears to have a liquid ocean. So too might the Jovian moons Callisto and Ganymede. Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, shown here, may be watery. Even Venus might have a bit of liquid water in its atmosphere. "There you already have seven other worlds that might have liquid water, just in our backyard. So that's kind of encouraging news," Shostak says.
Life evolved 'quickly' on Earth

Abigail Allwood

Scientists estimate that planet Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. The earliest evidence for life comes from 3.4 billion-year-old mats of bacteria called stromatolites in Australia. Since even bacteria are biologically complex, scientists think they arose from life forms that got a foothold on Earth even earlier. "That suggests it wasn't terribly improbable, the evolution of life, because it happened very quickly," Shostak says. The caveat, of course, is that Earth could have won the evolutionary equivalent of the lottery, and no place else is quite so lucky.
Life thrives in extreme environments

G. Wanger / JCVI / G. Southam /

Almost everywhere scientists go on Earth, they find life: the cold, dark depths of the oceans; snuggled up to piping-hot hydrothermal vents; buried under the Antarctic ice; and in South America's parched Atacama Desert. "Life can adapt to really tough conditions and, of course, most of the universe is going to be filled with habitats that are tough," Shostak says. For example, Mars is a harsh environment, but some of the microbes found on Earth, including the one shown here found deep in a mine, could survive beneath the surface of the Red Planet, he notes. These findings of so-called extremophiles have allowed scientists to scale back their list of requirements for extraterrestrial life. "We just say it has to have some liquid water, and maybe that's it," Shostak says.
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E.T. might be calling from afar

Courtesy of Jerry Ehman / Bigear

Shostak and his colleagues at the SETI Institute frequently harness some of the world's largest radio telescopes to home in on distant stars for a telltale signal of alien communications. Although their searches have raised a few alarms, the signals have been dismissed as human-caused interference, such as noise from a passing satellite. Contact remains elusive. Undaunted, the scientists keep searching. Meanwhile, a signal detected on Aug. 15, 1977, during a search with Ohio State University's Big Ear Observatory, continues to pique interest because it has never been explained. "It was impressive enough to encourage the astronomer who found it to write 'Wow!' on the printout," says Shostak. Follow-up experiments to detect it again, however, have failed. "You can say it was E.T. and then he went off the air. You may never know," Shostak says. "But it is not science to say it was E.T."
Some see evidence that 'aliens' have visited

Justin Norton / AP

Somewhere around half the people in the U.S. believe that aliens have already visited us. To back their claims, witnesses have presented snapshots of flying saucers and debris from crash landings. None of the evidence, however, convinces Shostak. Nor does he buy into theories that the world's governments are coordinated and efficient enough to collectively keep what would be the world's biggest secret. "That's hard for me to believe," he says. Such doubt does little to stop the tide of tourists coming to places such as Roswell, N.M., the site of a purported UFO crash more than 60 years ago. This fake alien at a museum is a commonly photographed attraction.

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Photos: Month in Space: April 2012

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Elephant face on Mars
A lava flow in Mars' Elysium Planitia region takes on the appearance of an elephant in this picture from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, captured on March 19 and released April 4. (NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Blast from the sun
This image provided by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the sun releasing a M1.7 class flare associated with a prominence eruption on April 16. This visually spectacular explosion occurred on the sun's northeastern limb and was not directed at Earth. (NASA/SDO/AIA) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Whirlwind on Mars
A dust devil the size of a terrestrial tornado towers above the Martian surface on a springtime afternoon in Amazonis Planitia. The picture was captured on March 14 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and released by the space agency on April 4. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Zeroing in on alien planets
An image from the European Southern Observatory's Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, or ALMA, shows the dust ring around the bright star Fomalhaut in orange. The underlying blue picture is an earlier view obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope. The new ALMA image, released on April 12, has led astronomers to conclude that the dust ring is held in place by two exoplanets. One planet is within the ring, and the other is outside the ring. Astronomers think the planets are bigger than Mars but no larger than several times the size of Earth. (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/NASA/ESA) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Cosmic Egg
The Hubble Space Telescope has been at the cutting edge of research into what happens to stars like our sun at the ends of their lives. One stage that stars pass through as they run out of nuclear fuel is the preplanetary nebula. This Hubble image of the Egg Nebula, released April 23, shows one of the best views to date of this brief but dramatic phase in a star’s life. (ESA/NASA) Share Back to slideshow navigation

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North Korea's launch pad
A March 28 satellite image from DigitalGlobe shows the North Korean launch site at Tongchang-ri. North Korea launched its Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite on April 13, but the rocket fell apart within minutes, bringing the controversial mission to a premature end. (Digitalglobe via EPA) Share Back to slideshow navigation

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Liftoff from India
India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C-19 blasts off on April 26, lofting the country's first radar imaging satellite RISAT-1 into orbit from the Satish Dhawan space center at Sriharikota, north of the southern Indian city of Chennai. The remote sensing satellite is equipped with a synthetic aperture radar that can look through clouds and capture Earth imagery day and night. (Reuters) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Tracking Discovery
Sixth-graders visiting the U.S. Capitol from the Stratford Academy in Macon, Ga., watch the final voyage of the space shuttle Discovery as it soars above Washington on April 17. Discovery, the world's most traveled spaceship, was retired from service last year and is now an attraction at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., next to Dulles International Airport. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Last landing
The space shuttle Discovery makes its final landing on the back of a modified Boeing 747 jet at Washington's Dulles International Airport on April 17. After landing, Discovery was towed to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, next to the airport. (Paul J. Richards / AFP - Getty Images) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Nose to nose
The space shuttles Enterprise, left, and Discovery sit nose-to-nose at the beginning of a transfer ceremony at the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center on April 19. Enterprise, which had been on exhibit for years at the museum in Virginia, was replaced by Discovery. (Carolyn Russo / Smithsonian Institution) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Enterprise hits the Big Apple
The prototype space shuttle Enterprise, mounted atop its modified 747 carrier jet, is seen off in the distance behind the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building on April 27. Enterprise was the first shuttle built for NASA and performed test flights in the atmosphere, but was incapable of spaceflight. For years the craft was housed at the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington. In April, it was moved out to make room for the shuttle Discovery. The Enterprise eventually will be put on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York. (NASA / Reuters) Share Back to slideshow navigation

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Space strummer
NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, commander of the International Space Station, strums the strings of his guitar on April 14 during some weekend leisure time. (ESA/NASA) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Fireball over Nevada
A meteor blazes over Reno, Nev., at around 8 a.m. PDT on April 22. Reports of the fireball came in from as far north as Sacramento, Calif. and as far east as North Las Vegas, Nev. Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center estimated that the object was about the size of a minivan, weighed in at around 154,300 pounds and at the time of disintegration released energy equivalent to a 5-kiloton explosion of TNT. (Lisa Warren / NASA/JPL via AP) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Down to Earth
Ground personnel carry Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov from his space capsule shortly after landing outside the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, on April 27. Shklaplerov, fellow cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and NASA astronaut Dan Burbank landed safely in a Russian Soyuz capsule after a stay of over five months aboard the International Space Station. Returning spacefliers are traditionally carried from the landing site while they readjust to Earth's gravity. (Sergei Remezov / Pool via EPA) Share Back to slideshow navigation

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Strange swirls on Mars
An image from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, released April 26, shows lava flows in the shape of coils located near Mars' equatorial region. Analyzing high-resolution images of the region, researchers have determined the area was sculpted by volcanic activity in the recent geologic past. This is the first time such geologic features have been discovered beyond Earth. (NASA) Share Back to slideshow navigation

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Tarantula in space
A Hubble Space Telescope composite image shows a stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, located in the heart of the Tarantula Nebula, 170,000 light-years away in a satellite galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. The telescope imaged 30 separate fields with its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys during October 2011 to produce this picture. The image was released April 17 in honor of Hubble's 22nd anniversary. (NASA/European Southern Observatory/Space Telescope Science Institute/Hubble Space Telescope) Share Back to slideshow navigation
UFO Galaxy
NGC 2683 is a spiral galaxy seen almost edge-on, giving it the shape of a science-fiction spaceship. That's the reason it was nicknamed the "UFO Galaxy." It's 35 million light-years away in the northern constellation Lynx. This picture of the galaxy, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, was released March 26 as the European Hubble team's Picture of the Week. (ESA / NASA) Share Back to slideshow navigation
Auroras on Uranus
These composite images from the Hubble Space Telescope show two bright spots that scientists say are auroral displays on the planet Uranus. The ice giant's faint rings can also be seen in the pictures, which were taken in November 2011 and released on April 13. (Laurent Lamy) Share Back to slideshow navigation

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A galactic double-take
This infrared vision from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, released April 24, shows the Sombrero Galaxy in the constellation Virgo. The galaxy was given its nickname because in visble light it looks like a wide-brimmed hat. The infrared imagery shows that the galaxy is in fact two galaxies in one: an inner disk that is seen here in a shade of blue-green, and an outer disk in red. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) Share Back to slideshow navigation

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Norwegian lights
Thorbjørn Haagensen took this picture of the northern lights on April 3 from Hillesøy, close to Tromsø in northern Norway. The winter season is prime time for auroral displays, but with the onset of spring, the northern lights begin to pale up north. "Beginning in the middle of May, the midnight sun brings sunshine all night long," Haagensen said. (Thorbjørn Haagensen) Share Back to slideshow navigation

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A 'major milestone' in search for Earth's twin

NASA's Kepler telescope confirms first alien planet found in habitable zone

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Jump to text NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first ...

Jump to interactive The search for extrasolar planets

Jump to explainer Six frontiers for alien life

Jump to photos Month in Space: April 2012

Jump to discuss comments below

Video: Planet found in 'habitable zone'

Closed captioning of: Planet found in 'habitable zone'

Interactive: The search for extrasolar planets

Explainer: Six frontiers for alien life

Photos: Month in Space: April 2012

Elephant face on Mars

Blast from the sun

Whirlwind on Mars

Zeroing in on alien planets

Cosmic Egg

North Korea's launch pad

Liftoff from India

Tracking Discovery

Last landing

Nose to nose

Enterprise hits the Big Apple

Space strummer

Fireball over Nevada

Down to Earth

Strange swirls on Mars

Tarantula in space

UFO Galaxy

Auroras on Uranus

A galactic double-take

Norwegian lights

Discuss:

More on TODAY.com

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video Iraq veteran calls VetDog 'life changing'

Justin Bieber allegedly batters photographer

Bobby Brown takes 'Every Little Step' on plaza

video Bobby Brown sings ‘My Prerogative’

Your pics! Brown kicks off summer

Yum! Make a delicious barbecued pork sandwich