On Monday an exciting landmark discovery in extra-solar planet hunting was announced by the team behind the Kepler space telescope.  For the first time, a roughly Earth sized planet has been found, orbiting a star very much like our own.  However the big news was that it is orbiting in the ‘goldilocks zone’ – just the right distance from the star for temperatures to allow liquid water to exist.

The planet, named Kepler 22b is only 2.5 times larger than our own planet and is a massive 600 light years away from us.  The star it is orbiting is remarkably similar to our own Sun, just slightly smaller and cooler.  In fact, if the planet is similar to Earth, with an active greenhouse effect then scientists predict the average temperature on this new planet would be 22oC. 

That however is a big if.  There is still a lot that we do not know about this planet.  It could be anything from a big ball of gas like a mini Jupiter, to a rocky planet like the Earth and Mars.  We also do not know if it has an atmosphere, and what that could be composed of, or if it has a protective magnetic field to shield it from harmful highly charged particles streaming from its star.

There is no doubt that Kepler-22b will be closely watched as it is studied further.  We are eager to find out how similar to Earth this new discovery might really be and find out whether it truly could support life similar to that found on Earth.  Not necessarily intelligent beings, but even knowing that simple life existed beyond our own ‘blue marble’ would be a revelation for generations to discuss.