Most Earth-like planet discovered

[JazzRemington]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb

This was recently discovered and seems to be the most Earth-like planet yet discovered in our galaxy.

[Atlas Swallowed]

Should launch Bush and Cheaney into space maybe they will find some stinking oil their.

[Clutch]

How 'bout we move ther instead and perhaps take them as well, tossing them out of the airlock on the way? :lol: ;)

[Vladislav]

Both good ideas and are pretty realistic.

I doubt humans will be moving there soon.

[commiecrusader]

This is one of the least exciting bits of news I've ever heard :lol:

To be the most earth-like planet around at the moment, it just has to have water in it's liquid form I would have thought. I have never read about a planet that sounds anything like ours. From the description it sounds absolutely nothing like the earth.

[Marx_was_right!]

Yep, might be more than one though... :o

http://www.chargednews.com/index.php?article=et

If we eventually settle let's genetically screen for 'human-nature' :ph34r:

[Jadan ja]

I haven't read it carefully, but isn't even Mars much more similar to Earth than that planet?

[Faceless]

Personally I find it all very exciting. Microlensing much more capable of finding Earth-sized objects at such large distances because the "wobble" of a star due to a planet's gravity is only very small for small sized stars whereas the second spike in luminosity of a star due to microlensing by a planet is only short lasting but very substantial. More exciting than this though is the prospect of actually seeing planets around other stars which could be done using interferometry with orbiting telescopes. That means using an array of telescopes seperated by a certain distance, which act as if they were single telescopes of much larger radii. By then blocking out the light of the sun, scientists are optimistic that they could actually see the much duller reflected light from the planet. This would be much more interesting as scientists could then use spectroscopy to tell what elements and compounds exist on the planet's surface. Obviously it is some time off yet, but I have no doubt it is going to happen eventually.

A lot of people don't seem to think this is really relevent to anything but I don't share that opinion.