NASA Kepler Discovers 10 new Earth-like planets which could sustain life

The 10 new Earth-like planets are orbiting their parent Stars within the Goldilocks zone and are among more than 200 new Planets discovered by Kepler and announced by NASA yesterday.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope team has released a mission catalog of planet candidates that introduces 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and orbiting in their star's habitable zone,

With the release of this catalog, derived from data publicly available on the NASA Exoplanet Archive, there are now 4,034 planet candidates identified by Kepler. Of which, 2,335 have been verified as exoplanets. Of roughly 50 near-Earth size habitable zone candidates detected by Kepler, more than 30 have been verified

“The Kepler data set is unique, as it is the only one containing a population of these near Earth-analogs – planets with roughly the same size and orbit as Earth,” said Mario Perez, Kepler program scientist in the Astrophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Understanding their frequency in the galaxy will help inform the design of future NASA missions to directly image another Earth.”
www.nasa.gov...

Are we alone ? , of course not but will we ever talk to them ?
With each new discovery come more targets for the James Webb space telescope to take a look at , just confirmation of existence will make me happy anything else is a bonus.

a reply to: gortex

See that they announced Cycle 1 for JWST? Posted the update to that thread a few days ago.

I have not seen any such announcements for TESS yet.

The more astronomical targets, the better!

And Kepler will continue looking while JWST and TESS haven't even hit the tarmac.

a reply to: gortex

Increasingly the odds put the nay-sayers of UFO on the defensive. "Yeah, they are out there,but they can't get here. Einstein said so. or, at least, we used to think so. I don't care how technological advanced or extensive their wisdom. They can't get here. They can mount giant solar collectors/shields around their entire sun or whatever, for all I can, but they can't get here. I don't know what UFOs really are, but they ain't aliens. No. 'Cannot be. I don't allow that kind of intelligence to imbue my own feelings of superiority of myself, my race, humans in general and the sanctity of of world. I won't have it."

We just barely detect Earth size planets. There are probably hundreds or even thousands more that are undetected in those same systems.

We should probably NOT talk to aliens. What if they are bovine? They will not be happy with our eating habits, or McDonalds.

Great news but how much time will pass before we can approach these planets

a reply to: ieronimo

unless the private firms start sending colony ships , it wont be in our lifetime

a reply to: Xeven

I doubt they'd care.

We really need to lose this anthropomorphic attitudes towards possible, if not likely, alien life that we may, or may not, come into contact with one day.

They are not going to be humans, probably not even human like, save by some sheer accident.

o come on to many ,movies you guys .
Lets take a close look at earth any and i mean any advanced life here has followed the excat same things .
Two eyes For depth perception 3 wont work and one wont work .
legs ( or modified legs ) into wings or arms as the case is . 4 total .
Why not 3 be kinda hard to run well why not 6 same problem .
mammal or reptile or bird they all follow this .
So wile details may differ slightly ET must have a way to see its world a dark planet no life evolves in caves forget it .
so will have eyes two . ET must have hands that can grasp things which mean fingers . 4 works 5 why not heck 6 or even 7 maybe but will still be a hand .
legs well they are just to walk with so toes or not minor .
ET will look alot like us Possible hairy maybe bald maybe reptile .
No insects will every amount to much . No lungs no skellition .
no way to get a bid enough brain .