New York: Scientists have found two Earth-sized planets orbiting a star outside the solar system, an encouraging sign for prospects of finding life elsewhere.
The discovery shows that such planets exist and that they can be detected by the Kepler spacecraft, said Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They're the smallest planets found so far that orbit a star resembling our sun.
Scientists are seeking Earth-sized planets as potential homes for extraterrestrial life, said Fressin, who reports the new findings in a paper published online yesterday by the journal Nature.
One planet's diameter is only 3 per cent larger than Earth's, while the other's diameter is about nine-tenths that of Earth. They appear to be rocky, like our planet.
But they are too hot to contain life as we know it, with calculated temperatures of about 1,400 degrees and 800 degrees Fahrenheit (760 Celsius and 425 Celsius), he said.
Source: The Indian Express, 21-12-2011
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