“The Earth has a cousin!” writes Canadian daily newspaper La Presse on the front-page headline of its Friday edition after NASA announced the discovery of Kepler-425b, one of the most Earth-like exoplanets identified so far. The planet was named after Kepler, the space telescope whose data enabled the discovery.
Described as “Earth’s bigger, older cousin” by NASA, Kepler-425b is 60% larger than Earth and located about 1,400 light years away from our planet. What makes this discovery remarkable is that it orbits its star at about the same distance that Earth orbits the sun, and its home star looks to be similar to our sun. According to NASA, Kepler-425b has a “substantial opportunity” to host life, despite being 1.5 billion years older than our planet.
Thursday’s news conference fell on the 20-year anniversary of the discovery of the first planet with a sun-like star outside of our solar system.
ABOUT THE SOURCE: La Presse is a major French-language daily Canadian newspapers. It was founded in Montréal in 1884.
