Another Earth?

Have scientists finally discovered another Earth? Not quite, but things are looking up.

There has been an ongoing examination of solar systems beyond our own, and scientists at NASA recently shared the discovery of an Earth-sized planet within the Habitable Zone of the Keplar system. This is great news for the folks who are hoping to one day go where no man has gone before, and equally exciting for the folks who hope somebody else is already there.

Keplar-186f is what some might call a “nerd promised land”. Why is that? Well, it all has to do with the location of this world outside our own system.

Because of their distance from their star and probable speed of rotation, planets located within the Kepler Habitable Zone have great potential to have pools of liquid water forming on the surface. And as the saying goes, where there’s water, there’s life–or in this case, the potential for it.

Of course, the reasoning is much more complicated than that.
For you nerdy-types just itching for more details, check out the science on this site, and for those looking for something a bit more aesthetically pleasing, the folks at NASA even made us this awesome video.

So, now that we know this planet exists, what does that mean for us Earthlings, you might ask? For one thing, it could take us one step closer to the possibility of colonization in space.

It has set the gears turning again for spacecraft designers who want to figure out how they might one day get to the Kepler system with probes or maybe even a manned spacecraft some day. That kind of motivation is highly likely to yield better short-term space vehicles and faster modes of space-travel as they seek ways to get out to Kepler quicker, too.

So far our seekers for extraterrestrial life have done most of their exploring here in our own solar system. Now they may have enough evidence to convince the powers that be of finding ways to widen their search as well. So, with all the knowledge we have now, is a trip to Keplar in the works? We’ll just have to wait and see.