NASA's planet-hunting Keplerspacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first alien world in its host star's habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist — and found more than 1,000 new explanet candidates, researchers announced.
The new finds bring the kepler space telescope total haul to 2,326 potential planets in its first 16 months of operation.These discoveries, if confirmed, would quadruple the current tally of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system, which recently topped 700.
Kepler-22b's radius is 2.4 times that of Earth, and the two planets have roughly similar temperatures. If the greenhouse effect operates there similarly to how it does on Earth, the average surface temperature on Kepler-22b would be 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius). It has All the right conditions for liquid water and thus life to exist. Although little is currently known about the surface of this alien world, however when the Hubble Space Telescope is updated in 2014, we will be able to make very accurate predictions about 22b and the handful of other known rocky planets in the 'Goldilocks zone'.
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