NASA believes there are more than a billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way

The discovery of the most Earth-like planet in the solar system by the NASA’s Kepler mission has sparked a lot of enthusiasm among the astronomers and other scientist’s but recent research suggests that there might be more planets that resemble Earth, on the brink of discovery. The scientists have already suggested in their reports in 2013 that there might be more than 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting around the habitable zones of sun-like stars. Now, NASA’s scientist, Natalie Batalha has said that there might be a billion Earths in the Milky Way galaxy alone. The new planet has been named Kepler 452b and at this moment little is known about it. Recently, it was reported that NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has discovered a bunch of new planets. Out of this lot, the scientists have indicated that Kepler 452b is most Earth-like planet that has ever been found outside the Solar system. All the information available is not a 100 per cent correct but estimates put the radius of the new planet to be about 60 per cent more than that of Earth.

The surface of Kepler 452b is probably rocky and it lies within the habitable zone of its parent star, much like the distance at which the Earth revolves around the Sun. Kepler 452b has not been seen by anyone yet and has been detected only by the Kepler telescope, the reason being that it is too far away. There are still speculations regarding the presence of atmosphere on Kepler 452b.

The Christian Science Monitor reported,” The new Planet circles its sun-like star in an orbit that lasts 385 days, placing it firmly in the zone that scientists consider habitable-where temperatures are warm enough for there to be liquid water on the surface.” A lot of data is available for the scientists as the Kepler has been collecting data about these exoplanets for six years. Most of this data was not useful earlier because of the lack of technology that could decipher them, but now, the scientists are making full use of the technology to unveil new facts about these exoplanets.This data mainly reveals information about the planet’s age, composition, surface temperatures etc. The planets that show potential are then reassessed to make sure that they are really planets or not.The scientists at NASA are very confident of finding new planets like Earth and believe that they are getting closer and closer to it.

Image Credit: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel