In contrast, the third Earth-like planet, Kepler 69c, orbits a star very similar to our sun (that is, hotter than Kepler 62).
The closest Earth-like planet may be only 13 light years away.
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Mars is the only other earth-like planet in the known universe.
But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one "Earth-like" planet.
Their simulations included the effects of eclipses and tidal heating on climate for an earth-twin in orbit around a Jupiter-like gaseous giant planet.
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Since the very first planets outside our solar system were discovered in the early 1990s, the hope has been to find an "Earth twin" - a planet like ours, orbiting a star like ours, at a distance like ours.
Astronomers using the Kepler telescope found the first known double-star planet just last September Kepler-16, a gassy oddball orb the size of Saturn that circles a pair of stars 200 light-years from Earth, like the planet Tatooine in the "Star Wars" films.
Astronomers using the Kepler telescope found the first known double-star planet just last September Kepler-16b, a gassy oddball orb the size of Saturn that circles a pair of stars 200 light-years from Earth, like the planet Tatooine in the "Star Wars" films.
In their paper, the co-authors argue that gravitational tidal heating caused by the gravitational friction of an earth-like exo-moon on an eccentric orbit around a Jupiter-like planet lying at a Jupiter-like distance from its parent star, could, in fact, create habitable conditions.
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These new additions bolster an already extensive library of British TV classics on the service, encompassing shows such as the much loved Doctor Who, the critically acclaimed Ashes to Ashes, spy drama Spooks, highly-acclaimed mini-series Whitechapel, as well as must-see documentaries like Planet Earth.
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However, the likelihood of such life developing is lower than that of a planet that could be considered more Earth-like.
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In a conference room, looking through a wall of glass into the Messenger mission-control center, Solomon described his fascination with the parched and moon-like planet, which is a sister of Earth.
The results suggest that 17% of stars host a planet up to 1.25 times the size of the Earth, in close orbits lasting just 85 days or fewer - much like the planet Mercury.
While US space agency Nasa is to launch a Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission which will also aim to locate Earth-like worlds.
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Since Kepler finds planets by measuring the tiny dips in a star's brightness when a dark planet moves across the face of that star, less accurate photometry means Earth-like planets will be too hard to find.
Kepler is searching for Earth-like planets around far-flung stars, and the Mars Science Laboratory will sample the Red Planet's geology looking for the building blocks of life - though it will not explicitly look for life itself.
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