Earth's Distant Cousin: Kepler 452b
Tamima Rashid
For a long time, one of the biggest questions about Earth has been whether there is any other planet like ours. With the help of our ever-improving technology, scientists have discovered an Earth-like planet about 1,402 light-years away. However, Kepler 452b is too far away to know if there is any life on it. It is an exoplanet, meaning that it orbits a different star than our sun. It was discovered via the Kepler, a now-retired space telescope used to find Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. With this fascinating invention, scientists discovered over 2,600 planets. My favourite is Kepler 452b, known as “Earth’s cousin”.
Its star is about the same mass as ours. Though Kepler 452b is farther away from its star, it takes about the same time to orbit it (385 days) as Earth. Kepler 452b is in its star’s goldilocks zone. This means that the distance away from its planet makes it the perfect temperature for life. Scientists theorise that it may have had water at some point in its existence—even, perhaps, now! The planet may also be home to many active volcanoes, with its slightly warmer temperatures. Kepler 452b looks remarkably similar to Earth.
One of the biggest differences between our planet and Kepler 452b is its size. It is five times larger than Earth. It is also believed to be 1.5 billion years older. This is a worry for professionals—“As it is more than a billion years ahead of us, who knows where evolution has taken it? We might find that life was very much not as we know it. Indeed, it might be rather like living at a Star Trek convention, or that nasty moment in Ant Man where the hero leaves the comforting world of Michael Douglas’s study and goes ‘sub atomic’, rolling around in a foetal position surrounded by opening and closing geometric shapes,” says Rosie Millard. Scientists are unsure what its atmosphere is made of, but it is highly unlikely to be the same as our planet. This is one of the biggest factors determining whether this planet is habitable, but unfortunately, this question remains unanswered.
Even with sophisticated rockets, it would take over 30 million years to travel to Kepler 452b. From so far away, much of what we know about this planet are educated guesses. For example, determining its size (its diameter is 19,113 km while our Earth’s is 12,742km) was a very complicated process. As Kepler 452b orbits in front of its star, in our view for a few hours, scientists can see through a high-tech telescope where the light gets dimmer. They used that information to roughly calculate the size of this mysterious planet. Even though it has been around long enough for intelligent life to form, it is very unlikely that we will ever contact the possible inhabitants of this planet. Being so incredibly far away, it would take until about 3415 for it to arrive.
The Kepler space telescope has been integral to finding out information about this planet. Launched in 2009, it set off in search of the answer to my most burning question about space—is there anything like our world somewhere out there? Some exciting new developments are in store for anyone interested in Earth-like planets: in 2026, the European Space Agency will launch a spacecraft in search of planets like Earth. The possibilities are endless—who knows what we’ll find?
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