Nobody can tell. It's more interesting as a member of a population of Earth sized planets orbiting suns similar to Earth. This particular planet might not be Earth like at all, and we may not learn much more about it in the near future, because it is so far from the Earth at 1400 light years away.
It's most interesting for what it tells us about the possibilities for nearby solar systems which we can hope to find in the future.
Kepler is best for getting an idea of what proportion of stars have planets, and of what types, because it focuses on a small patch of the sky, using transit method, looking at lots of stars likely to be far away.
But now that it's found that some G type stars have planets like Earth - that means that maybe even some of the nearby G type stars, maybe even Alpha Centauri, - makes it a bit more likely we may find Earth like stars around those also.
There are many much closer potentially habitable exoplanets already known:
And it's not even the planet most similar to Earth found so far
The main thing that's notable about it is that it's sun is very similar to our sun. Which given that our sun seems to have been pretty much ideal for life on Earth, may be a good sign. But then on the other hand, might be that there are other stars that are also good stars for life, is hard to reason very far with a sample size of just one known inhabited star to date. The smaller and more numerous red and orange dwarfs also seem to have a lot of promise for habitable worlds, and because there are so many of them, could easily be that the best places to look for life are around, e.g., orange dwarfs (or red dwarfs), or whatever. We just don't know at present.
And note - that we know nothing about this planet except its size and orbit. Don't really know its mass - that's a guess. Amongst other possibilities:
But is early days yet. We don't have much chance of finding out a lot about it at that distance, but given that there are likely to be many planets like that closer to Earth, other searches and telescopes will probably let us study those ones and eventually find answers to questions like that for the closer stars, especially e.g. after the launch of a giant telescope to the L2 position at far side of the Moon especially designed to help with the search for habitable worlds (the James Webb telescope).
If close enough for spectroscopic observation we can look at its atmosphere and detect e.g. if there is oxygen, methane etc in its atmosphere. And also spectroscopic observation of its surface also and distinguish e.g. if it has oceans or ice, or even maybe detect organic chemicals produced by life e.g. whatever is its equivalent of chlorophyll if it has it. Eventually there are methods that may be able to pick out the larger permanent surface variations also such as ice caps and continents (based on the spin which lets us see different parts of it at different times).
There are many nearby planets that may well be habitable. List of nearest terrestrial exoplanet candidates
And even restricting search to sun like stars, quite a few nearby G stars.
Even Alpha Centauri, closest G type star known to Earth, only 4.24 light years away, only a little further than Proxima Centauri, the closest known star to Earth, could have planets in its habitable zone.
These authors in a 2008 paper raised the possibility that we could detect those planets: Page on arxiv.org
And there is a search underway to try to find them: The Mt John University Observatory search for Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of α Centauri
In short this is one significant step along the road to detecting habitable exoplanets - as to whether this particular one is habitable, nobody knows, and maybe the chances aren't that great that it is (depending on how easy it is for a habitable planet to arise around a G type star) but the evidence suggests its one example of a large population of planets around sun like stars - and so with so many planets this increases the chances that we may be able to detect one close enough to study that is not just like Earth but also orbiting a sun-like G class star.
BTW they said that the age of 6 billion years is correct to about +- 2 billion years. So - though probably older than our solar system, it's still within the bound of possibility that it is younger. If older, it could also give us an idea of some of the possibilities for future evolution of planets in a solar system similar to ours, though this particular planet is five times more massive than Earth.
See also: Robert Walker's answer to Is there a way to detect if there is intelligent life on Kepler-452b?
(Duplicates most of Robert Walker's answer to How can NASA be assured of potentially favourable living conditions just by looking at Kepler 452B? - several questioners asking rather similar questions on this topic today not surprisingly).
It's most interesting for what it tells us about the possibilities for nearby solar systems which we can hope to find in the future.
Kepler is best for getting an idea of what proportion of stars have planets, and of what types, because it focuses on a small patch of the sky, using transit method, looking at lots of stars likely to be far away.
But now that it's found that some G type stars have planets like Earth - that means that maybe even some of the nearby G type stars, maybe even Alpha Centauri, - makes it a bit more likely we may find Earth like stars around those also.
There are many much closer potentially habitable exoplanets already known:
And it's not even the planet most similar to Earth found so far
The main thing that's notable about it is that it's sun is very similar to our sun. Which given that our sun seems to have been pretty much ideal for life on Earth, may be a good sign. But then on the other hand, might be that there are other stars that are also good stars for life, is hard to reason very far with a sample size of just one known inhabited star to date. The smaller and more numerous red and orange dwarfs also seem to have a lot of promise for habitable worlds, and because there are so many of them, could easily be that the best places to look for life are around, e.g., orange dwarfs (or red dwarfs), or whatever. We just don't know at present.
And note - that we know nothing about this planet except its size and orbit. Don't really know its mass - that's a guess. Amongst other possibilities:
- It could be a tiny version of Jupiter - a miniature gas giant with no solid surface.
- Its oceans could have boiled away like Venus, and have a dense atmosphere and a surface temperature of hundreds of degrees centigrade.
- It could be a snowball planet, just solid ice on the surface to depths of tens or hundreds of kilometers
- Could be a bare rock with no water or atmosphere at all.
- It could be an ocean world, but with no continents or shallow regions, everywhere hundreds of kilometers deep oceans, with the floors of the oceans covered in thick layers of dense ice (if the ocean is very deep then you get a form of ice that sinks rather than floats) - so insulating the water from minerals and rocks making it rather unlikely that life evolves according to modern ideas.
- Or it could be a world with shallow oceans and continents, and an atmosphere of some sort.
- Or even a second Earth. Even with life and multicellular life.
But is early days yet. We don't have much chance of finding out a lot about it at that distance, but given that there are likely to be many planets like that closer to Earth, other searches and telescopes will probably let us study those ones and eventually find answers to questions like that for the closer stars, especially e.g. after the launch of a giant telescope to the L2 position at far side of the Moon especially designed to help with the search for habitable worlds (the James Webb telescope).
If close enough for spectroscopic observation we can look at its atmosphere and detect e.g. if there is oxygen, methane etc in its atmosphere. And also spectroscopic observation of its surface also and distinguish e.g. if it has oceans or ice, or even maybe detect organic chemicals produced by life e.g. whatever is its equivalent of chlorophyll if it has it. Eventually there are methods that may be able to pick out the larger permanent surface variations also such as ice caps and continents (based on the spin which lets us see different parts of it at different times).
There are many nearby planets that may well be habitable. List of nearest terrestrial exoplanet candidates
And even restricting search to sun like stars, quite a few nearby G stars.
Even Alpha Centauri, closest G type star known to Earth, only 4.24 light years away, only a little further than Proxima Centauri, the closest known star to Earth, could have planets in its habitable zone.
These authors in a 2008 paper raised the possibility that we could detect those planets: Page on arxiv.org
And there is a search underway to try to find them: The Mt John University Observatory search for Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of α Centauri
In short this is one significant step along the road to detecting habitable exoplanets - as to whether this particular one is habitable, nobody knows, and maybe the chances aren't that great that it is (depending on how easy it is for a habitable planet to arise around a G type star) but the evidence suggests its one example of a large population of planets around sun like stars - and so with so many planets this increases the chances that we may be able to detect one close enough to study that is not just like Earth but also orbiting a sun-like G class star.
BTW they said that the age of 6 billion years is correct to about +- 2 billion years. So - though probably older than our solar system, it's still within the bound of possibility that it is younger. If older, it could also give us an idea of some of the possibilities for future evolution of planets in a solar system similar to ours, though this particular planet is five times more massive than Earth.
See also: Robert Walker's answer to Is there a way to detect if there is intelligent life on Kepler-452b?
(Duplicates most of Robert Walker's answer to How can NASA be assured of potentially favourable living conditions just by looking at Kepler 452B? - several questioners asking rather similar questions on this topic today not surprisingly).
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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