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Telescope Detects Possible Earth-Size Planet
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
Scientists working with NASA's Kepler satellite reported Thursday that they might have spotted a planet just 1.5 times the diameter of Earth around a Sun-like star 2,000 light-years away.
"We're still in the process of confirming this candidate is a planet," said Matthew Holman, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, at a NASA-sponsored news conference on Thursday. Dr. Holman is the lead author of an article describing the discoveries that the journal Science published on its Web site.
This is the first announcement of a candidate Earth-size planet by the Kepler mission, which in March 2009 launched a one-ton spacecraft to search for planets like ours that just might harbor life. The planet was among more than 700 candidate planets that the team announced in June. If it is made of similar stuff as Earth, its mass would be three to four times as much.
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