Potentially habitable exoplanet Kepler-452 b

(ORDO NEWS) — On July 23, 2015, NASA announced the discovery of the Earth-like exoplanet Kepler-452 b orbiting the yellow dwarf Kepler-452.

This world, which journalists have nicknamed “Earth 2.0”, is located in the constellation Cygnus, 1,400 light years from us.

A yellow dwarf is a class of small stars that have masses between 0.84 and 1.15 solar masses and surface temperatures between 4727 and 5727 degrees Celsius. The best known and most studied yellow dwarf is our Sun.

The exoplanet Kepler-452 b was discovered by the NASA Kepler space telescope using the transit method – fixing a periodic change in the brightness of a star caused by the passage of an exoplanet against its background.

Kepler-452 b is the first discovered rocky super-Earth (1 to 10 Earth masses ) orbiting the habitable zone of a sun-like star.

Recall that the habitable zone is a conditional region in space-time, which provides the possibility of the existence of water in the liquid phase on the surface of a body.

Comparison of Kepler-452 b with the Earth

• The exoplanet makes a complete revolution around its star in 385 days. Earth – in 365 days
• Kepler-452 b is about 50% larger than the Earth and 5 times heavier than our planet
• The gravity on the surface of Kepler-452 b is twice that on Earth
• Kepler-452 b is a rocky exoplanet and its chemical composition is likely to be roughly identical to that of Earth
• Kepler-452 b is 1.5 billion years older than Earth, which is about 4.5 billion years old

Kepler-452 b is a large Earth-like exoplanet, which means it can be assumed that there are many active volcanoes on its surface, which provide Earth 2.0 with a dense atmosphere and a moderate greenhouse effect.

Based on the available data and modeling results, the scientists concluded that the average equilibrium temperature (the estimated minimum average temperature of an Earth-like planet) of Kepler-452 b is -8 degrees Celsius.

The average equilibrium temperature of the Earth is -23 degrees Celsius. Thus, it is warmer on the surface of Kepler-452 b than on Earth.

Kepler-452 b is a fairly comfortable world where life could have originated.

According to the catalog of Earth-like exoplanets, Kepler-452 b is recognized as habitable with a probability of 83%.

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