Tek-Bull

Another Habitable Planet Found!

This is becoming sort of a regular occurrence lately, every other month or so scientist find a new planet that is in the “habitable” zone. Like wise, the planet is always WAY to far out to really mean anything special. In this case, NASA found a planet that is 600 light years away, and is in the habitable zone. Being in the habitable zone means that it has all the right ingredients to possibly sustain life. The temperature is also at a very comfortable 70 degrees, but they don’t know if it has green house gases yet, without the gases the planet is not able to really sustain a chemical balance for life.

Kepler-22b, as it was called, has a 290 day long year, meaning it has seasons like the Earth. Every time that they find a planet like this one, everyone goes head over heals over the new find. While it is true that a planet with life would completely break the news and force us to start a new space age, you need to look at the other side of the story.

The planet is about 2.4 times the mass of the Earth, this means that while you won’t die in the surface of the planet, you’re not going to be pretty happy about living there. Then you have to find out exactly what kind of gases are found in the planet. Not to mention the distance from the earth, it’s several thousand years away. The astronomers are going to start looking at the planet a bit closer next summer to figure out if the planet is made out of gas, water, or rock. Until then, the picture I posted above is just another dud planet.

AP, via PopSci