This planet is the second Earth

Scientists from NASA have confirmed the discovery of planets in the "zone of conditions conducive to the emergence of life." Planet was discovered by Kepler telescope - the agency announced on its website.

The term "zone of conditions conducive to the emergence of life" (called habitable zone), scientists use when on planets orbiting a star can control the conditions for the creation, maintenance and development of living organisms. The most important condition is considered the existence of liquid water.

Kepler planet-22b is distant from the Earth about 600 light years. Its radius is about 2.4 times larger than the radius of the Earth and orbits its star in 290 days. Scientists do not know yet whether the surface is rocky planets, gas or liquid. For it suggests that there is basically a temperature of about 22 deg C. - favoring the existence of water. Her star is somewhat similar to our sun, though it is the smaller and cooler.

Kepler planet-22b is the smallest yet discovered, circulating in an orbit Mazursky in the middle "zone conditions for the occurrence of life" around a star similar to our Sun. - This is a big step toward finding Earth's twin - rated one of the researchers carrying out the program in Washington Kepler NASA headquarters, Douglas Hudgins.

Kepler-22b is the first planet of the group confirmed the identity of the 54 candidates on the planet, which NASA scientists reported in February 2011, It's just a matter of time before we hear of further confirmations of existence, "the latter Lands" - experts.

Kepler spotted a new planet - set the telescope to explore the planets and candidates for the name. This device measures the changes in brightness of over 150 thousand. the stars. Such changes may be a signal called. transit - pass the planet on the background of the observed star. To verify the signal, Kepler telescope must observe at least three such transits.

With the discovery of the planet's fate smiled on us - says William Borucki of NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field (California), leader of the team who discovered the planet Kepler-22b. - The first transit, what we saw, came just three days after I noticed from the efficiency of the probe. Last, the third transit, we observed the holiday season in 2010 - he said.

nvolved in the project Kepler scientists use ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope. They examine the results of observations of Kepler telescope, which "candidates for the planet" lookout on the border of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

Already implementing a project, researchers reported the discovery of Kepler 1 094 new objects - candidates on the planet. Since February, when the last time the census was published, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler has grown and is now 2 326th In this group of objects up to 207 is of a size similar to Earth, 680 is larger (referred to as "super-Earth"), 1 181 resembles the size of Neptune, 203 - Jupiter, and 55 is greater than he.

The findings, which were made by observing the period from May 2009 to September 2010 show that Earth-like planets may be in space more than expected.