Astronomers find the most Earth-like worlds yet

[GitteBaique]

Planet-hunting astronomers revealed last week that they’d found two tantalizing worlds, seemingly congenial to life as we know it, ­orbiting a star 1,200 light years away.
Neither planet has been seen directly, and whether they actually harbor living things is speculative. Their presence has been inferred by the dimming of their parent star at regular intervals, as observed by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.
Kepler 62-f is just a bit larger than Earth — 1.41 Earth radii, to be precise — and it’s in the so-called Goldilocks position, orbiting the star (Kepler 62) at a distance where water could be splashing freely at the surface. The scientists think Kepler 62-f is a rocky planet, like our own.
They also found Kepler 62-e, which is 1.6 times the radius of the Earth. It is closer to the parent star, and warmer, but also within what is presumed to be the habitable zone. Scientists think the size of Kepler 62-e makes it a good ­candidate for being a water world, completely covered by ocean.