Free Talk Live

SETI will listen to newly discovered "Earthlike Planet"

First, I should say right away that the planet that has been in the news so much lately is not known to be "earth like" ... depending on what you think "earth like" is. What we know is that the planet orbits its star in a position that allows for the possibility that water on its surface could be liquid. But, the possibility that the planet has a "surface" ... as opposed to some increasingly dense gaseous layer like Neptune ... has not yet been established. Not that this would favor life one way or another. For all we know, getting life started on a hard crust covered earth is way harder than on a gaseous liquid water rich blob of a planet.