I see an economic diasater coming...

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The Kepler team released data from its first 13 months of operation back in February, announcing that the instrument had detected 1,235 planet candidates, including 54 in the habitable zone and 68 that are roughly Earth-size.[/size]
Of the total 2,326 candidate planets that Kepler has found to date, 207 are approximately Earth-size. More of them, 680, are a bit larger than our planet, falling into the "super-Earth" category. The total number of candidate planets in the habitable zones of their stars is now 48.[/size]
To date, just over two dozen of these potential exoplanets have been confirmed, but Kepler scientists have estimated that at least 80 percent of the instrument's discoveries should end up being the real deal.[/size]

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Now that we have at least a dozen more earths to visit.Maybe we can get fired up about visiting them?triffid




Make that 48! The total number of candidate planets in the habitable zones of their stars is now 48.




That we know about today!12/5/2011.triffid

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Kepler-22b  has a radius which is 2.4 times of the earth.So we would all weigh more!triffid




A news broadcast announcing the find!http://www.cbc.ca/video/?/News/Technology%20and%20Science/ID=2173810319/#/News/Technology_and_Science/1244504143/ID=2173810319

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Determining the planet’s composition rests in part on measuring its mass â€" how heavy it is. The Kepler telescope is unable to make this measurement, but ground-based telescopes can by watching the planet tugging on its star. Telescopes in Hawaii and elsewhere will attempt these measurements when the star comes into view next summer, Borucki said.[/size][/font]
Besides its balmy temperature, Kepler-22b shares other intriguing similarities with Earth. The planet’s home star, some 600 light years distant and near the constellation Cygnus, is “almost a solar twin,” Batahla said. That means the light hitting the planet’s surface would be almost the same color as the light hitting Earth. And Kepler-22b’s year is almost the same length as an Earth year: 290 days instead of 365.[/size][/font]
Finding Kepler-22b required a bit of luck. The Kepler telescope first spied the planet crossing the face of its star just days after the telescope became operational in 2009, Borucki said. As Kepler kept staring, it witnessed two more crossings, one of which occurred just days before the telescope was set to go offline for a few weeks. The third crossing happened just before Christmas last year.[/size][/font]


more of the same article.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/newest-alien-planet-is-just-the-right-temperature-for-life/2011/12/05/gIQAPk1vWO_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage

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Its amazing that we can discover a whole new world to pollute.Hopefully by the time we can get there we will have evolved beyond where we are now.Hopefully we will have learned not to pollute living worlds.triffid