Fuck yeah!
From Daily Mail today
The 'second Earths' that could be home to alien life: Study finds Kepler-62f and 186f are far more similar to our planet than thought
Two exoplanets, 500 and 1,200 light years away are far more similar to earth than though, astronomers have revealed.
Kepler-186f, 500 light-years away, is the first identified Earth-sized planet outside the solar system orbiting a star in the habitable zone.
A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology provides new clues indicating that along with Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-sized planet orbiting around a star about 1,200 light-years away from us, it could be extremely similar to our own planet.
Those dynamics determine how much a planet tilts on its axis and how that tilt angle evolves over time.
Axial tilt contributes to seasons and climate because it affects how sunlight strikes the planet's surface.
The researchers suggest that Kepler-186f's axial tilt is very stable, much like the Earth, making it likely that it has regular seasons and a stable climate.
The Georgia Tech team thinks the same is true for Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-sized planet orbiting around a star about 1,200 light-years away from us.
The say the measurement is key - and that large variability in axial tilt could be a key reason why Mars transformed from a watery landscape billions of years ago to today's barren desert.
'Mars is in the habitable zone in our solar system, but its axial tilt has been very unstable - varying from zero to 60 degrees,' said Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Gongjie Li, who led the study together with graduate student Yutong Shan from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
'That instability probably contributed to the decay of the Martian atmosphere and the evaporation of surface water.'
As a comparison, Earth's axial tilt oscillates more mildly - between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees, going from one extreme to the other every 10,000 or so years.
Continued in article
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5898079/The-two-second-Earths-harbour-alien-life.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
It was bound to happen