NASA's Big Announcement

Well, the speculation wasn't exactly right.

Before the NASA press conference Thursday, as reported in this blog, some speculation had been that the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft had discovered an Earth-like world that could possibly support life. In fact, NASA announced Kepler had discovered a star system that contained at least two Saturn-sized planets, and possibly another planet only slightly larger than Earth. Both big exoplanets travel in orbits that would be inside Mercury's orbit around the Sun, and the smaller world, if it's confirmed, is closer yet, taking about 1.6 Earth days to make one complete revolution. There is, therefore, no real question of life as we know it on any of those worlds.

Still, NASA and the astronomical community are pleased. The discoveries confirm the sensitivity of Kepler's instruments and the ability of the adopted strategy to find planets around other stars-- even worlds roughly the size of Earth.