Speculations About Kepler-22b
Could it have aliens? And what would they be like?
NASA has discovered the most Earth-like planet found to date, some 600 light-years away. Kepler-22b is two and a half times larger than Earth, and orbits a star very much like our own sun. It has an average temperature of 72 degrees, warmer than that of our own planet's, which is about 60 degrees.
Kepler-22b was spotted by the Kepler space telescope, which is not able to tell us whether or not the planet has an atmosphere, or what the planet's mass might be. It is a slight red flag that Kepler-22b is twice the size of Earth. This means that it may turn out to be a gas giant, a planet like Neptune or Jupiter with a small rocky core surrounded by gases. But in the best-case scenario, it could turn out to be a high-gravity ocean planet.
