Scientists discovered two Earth-like planets Kepler 438b and Kepler 442b

The Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics have discovered two Earth-like planets Kepler 438b and Kepler 442b. The findings of the discovery were published in The Astrophysical Journal on 5 January 2015.

The planets were spotted by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope which detects planets as they move across the faces of their stars. Kepler collected the data for four years.

The Harvard-Smithsonian team led by Guillermo Torres used a computer program called Blender to confirm that the planets were real.

Kepler-438b
• Kepler 438b is 475 light years away. It gets about 40 percent more heat from its red sun than Earth gets from the Sun.
• With a diameter just 12 percent bigger than Earth, Kepler-438b has a 70 percent chance of being rocky.
• The planet completes an orbit around its star every 35 days, making a year on the planet pass 10 times as fast as on Earth.
• Its proximity to its star places it in the Goldilocks or habitable zone where the temperature is appropriate for liquid water to flow.
• The mean temperature of Kepler 438b is expected to be 60 degrees Celsius.

Kepler-442b
• Kepler-442b is 1100 light-years away. It is 33 percent bigger than Earth and orbits its star once every 112 days. has a 60-percent chance of being rocky.
• There is 97 percent chance that Kepler-442b has water on its surface.
• The mean temperature of Kepler-442b is expected to be 0 degree Celsius.