Science & Technology

Extrasolar Planet Found With Similar Composition, Size as Earth, But Only 1 Million Miles From Its Sun

stumped

|

Four hundred light-years away in the constellation Cygnus there lies a G-type star very like our own Sun. Orbiting it is a world which scientists believe is very similar to Earth in both size and composition.

This faraway world, discovered by the Kepler space telescope and so dubbed Kepler-78b, is not a potential second home for humanity (or alien life along the same general lines as that of Earth). That's because it orbits its sun at a distance of just a million miles, rather than the 93 million that lie between us and Sol. And it's this which has top astro-boffins around the world baffled.