NASA finds a new planet - "Another Earth"

(Photo: Christos Georghiou/Shutterstock.com)

It is about a discovery found by using spacecraft telescope Kepler, launched in the Earth's orbit in order to search for exoplanets, planets out of our solar system.

Scientists claim that Kepler 452b, as the "another Earth" is named, is older and bigger cousin of our planet, that could offer an opportunity to understand the Earth's development.

Not only that it is located in the "ideal zone", where a life is possible, because it is neither too hot, nor too cold for water in liquid state, but it's star also looks like an "older sister" of our Sun, reports NASA. In other words, this exoplanet, 1,400 light years far from us, could give us an insight into apocalyptic future of the Earth, scientists think.

- “If Kepler 452b is indeed a rocky planet, its location could mean that it is just entering a runaway greenhouse phase of its climate history,” said Doug Caldwell, a SETI Institute scientist working on the Kepler mission.

- “The increasing energy from its aging sun might be heating the surface and evaporating any oceans. The water vapour would be lost from the planet forever - he added.

- “Kepler 452b could be experiencing now what the Earth will undergo more than a billion years from now, as the Sun ages and grows brighter.” - said Caldwell.

Process of monitoring the exoplanet will start in 2017, specially focused on research how habitable it is.

The Kepler spacecraft has been looking for signs of new worlds outside the Solar System since May 2009, searching for a planet with a possibility to sustain life. So far, that "planet hunter" has found more than 1,000 new worlds.