Kepler 186F
Nasa’s Kepler space telescope—launched in 2009—has been on the lookout for earth-like planets within the habitable zones (the distance from a star within which water can exist in the liquid form) of remote stars. Among the planets it has located (the first, Kepler-22b, was found in 2011), Kepler 186f is the only one that is similar to the earth in size. It is 500 light years away from Earth in a constellation called Cygnus and, drawing from earlier research, is expected to have a rocky surface. The planet orbits its sun—which is half the size of our sun—once every 130 days. From the surface of the planet, the brightness of the sun at noon is what our sun appears to be an hour before sunset.
(This story appears in the 30 May, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)