Astronomers have found the first Earth-sized world circling its mother star at a distance suitable for life. It also has good prospects for liquid surface water — believed to be a key ingredient for life.
“This planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life,” said Xavier Delfosse, with Grenoble University in France.
It will be years before more sensitive instruments are developed to glean additional clues about whether life exists on the planet.
“It is not possible with current telescopes and instruments yet,” Xavier Bonfils, an astronomer with the Lisbonne Observatory in Portugal, wrote in an e-mail to Discovery News. “But in the next decade, we may have the tools to answer this question.”
The planet, which is about 50 percent larger than Earth, circles a star in the constellation Libra known as Gliese 581, about 20.5 light-years away. Light travels in a vacuum at about 187,000 miles per second.
Discovery Channel :: News – Space :: New Earth-like Planet ‘Habitable’