NASA's Kepler Mission Finds Smallest Earthlike Planet Outside Solar System

[wathsalive]

The smallest planet yet spied outside our solar system has been found orbiting a sunlike star about 560 light-years away, astronomers announced today. Known as Kepler-10b, the planet is just 1.4 times Earth's size and 4.6 times its mass.

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The planet, found using NASA's Kepler spacecraft, is the first of the more than 500 known exoplanets that's

Comments

[kiarasayre]

I'm at AAS right now, holy crap! I saw some of the presentations on Kepler 10b, and it looks really interesting. There should be some more really interesting talks on it tomorrow, including (I believe - don't quote me on this) in the session on habitability.

[wathsalive]

Wow! That's pretty awesome; I can imagine the presentations and talks must be pretty exciting these couple of days.
And thanks for the heads up (which I won't quote you on!) - I think with the Kepler's capabilities we'll be finding a lot of these planets in the future, and inevitably a few in the habitable zone.

[starryniteynite]

hey--me too! we should have a ONTD science meetup! Maybe at the habitability session?

[wathsalive]

lol

[mayden]

What about the news about the girl who spotted a supernova?

[myfrontier]

Seriously, some girl spotted a supernova?

[geekjul]

Indeed, these comments got me curious so I found it and posted it just now

[akashasheiress]

MTE.

[supermouse]

Unlikely. Space is very, very big and we travel very slowly.