With every new likely habitable planet discovered the chance of finding life out in the universe increases rapidly:
NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star
French astronomers’ confirmed finding Gliese 581d in May anorther similar planet and Swiss astronomers reported in August that another planet, HD 85512 b, about 36 light years away seemed to be in the habitable zone of its star.However, those two planets are “orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our Sun,” NASA said in a statement, noting that Kepler-22b “is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our Sun.” Sourceposted by realufos at 7:43 AM on Dec 6, 2011
