[ckilmer]

ping

[Buckeye McFrog]

“The increasing energy from its aging sun might be heating the surface and evaporating any oceans. The water vapor would be lost from the planet forever,” said Doug Caldwell, a SETI scientist assigned to the Kepler mission. “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.”

So we're worried about minute increases in carbon dioxide WHY again?

[Seruzawa]

Newsflash. With trillions of stars in the universe or maybe quintillions, no one knows since, there are billions of inhabitable worlds.

[gaijin]

That photo is EXACTLY like the front cover of Popular Mechanics:

Huuuuuge draw, and then NOTHING but that photo and ONE paragraph on the story inside (for which there is no page number).

[cripplecreek]

Well its in the goldilocks zone and is a bit larger than earth but we really don’t know much more.

[DannyTN]

Send a seed ship.

[brownsfan]

1,400 light years away? Ok, it’s mildly interesting, but it’s not “breaking”, it’s not even useful.

[ryan71]

Really? Thousands of parameters, “just right”? No.

[Mechanicos]

Bad Science: There are over 100 unique conditions for life on earth. They like to take just 3 of 4 and imply its the equivalent of earth...

[Red Badger]

Only 1,400 light-years away..............We’ll leave tomorrow....................

[exnavy]

1400 light years away, no one alive today will ever see it.

[zipper]

Wow! What an amazing coincidence, the Kepler spacecraft found the only “habitable” planet, Kepler 452-b!

[EGPWS]

Has the Senate begun meetings yet to pass pertinent laws to prevent human caused glowbull warming on these planets yet?

[MrB]

Artist impression of the surface of the Earth-like Kepler 452b

---

might as well have added cities and flying cars

[BigEdLB]

I know who we can send! Doesn’t everyone...?

[Cementjungle]

There are billions of "habitable" places out there.

Give me more funding and I'll keep repeating that statement.

[from occupied ga]

The planet is 1,400 light-years away from our Solar System and orbits a star astronomers call our Sun’s cousin

Hmm lets send Sheila Jackson Lee. Send her at voyager speed (39,000 mph) she should get there in about 24 million years.

[Bubba_Leroy]

The most “Earth-like” planet ever discovered is almost exactly the same size and mass as Earth and orbits at the edge of the “habitable zone” of an identical star.

It is called the planet Venus.

I strongly suspect that most “Earth-like” exoplanets are actually far more “Venus-like.”

Size, mass and orbit in the “habitable zone” of a star are only three of an infinite number of factors that have to all coincide for a planet to be even potentially habitable for microbes and bacteria. Other big factors include a solar system containing significant amounts of the full range of heavy elements, a planet with a liquid metal core that generates a significant magnetic field, a relatively large moon to generate tides and block some of the near planet asteroids and comets, large gas giants in the outer solar system blocking most of the rest of the asteroids and comets, no stars going super-nova within 100 light years and spitting out significant amounts of x-rays and cosmic radiation, etc., etc.

[jimmygrace]

Contradictions abound. If this planet’s sun is older than ours by a billion years, then it likely never had life that evolved to intelligence, otherwise we would see some artificial sign coming from the area, such as cohesive waves. The more technologically advanced we get, the more likely that our emissions will reach out further into space. If there were life out there, what are the chances that we are the most advanced? If there are billions of planets out there with life, you would think that some percentage of them would be more advanced than us.

[Iscool]

1400 light years, eh??? I wonder how much food I’d have to pack for the trip...