Earth is the lone oceanic planet in the family of the Sun.
Now imagine a planetary system with two of them.
Astronomers may have found just such a system.
And the two water-worlds orbiting there are among the closest analogs of Earth yet found.
The star Kepler 62, about 1200-odd light years away in the constellation Lyra, is like our Sun but smaller and cooler.
So the habitable orbits – where water can be liquid – are closer in.
Each of the two candidate water-worlds could be entirely covered by a global ocean, according to astronomers’ computer models.
Orbiting once every 122 Earth-days, Kepler 62e could be tropical – humid and hot – with a very cloudy atmosphere.
It’s perhaps 60% bigger than Earth.
Further out – in a 267-day orbit – Kepler 62f is about 40% larger than Earth.
And it’s almost surely cooler; in fact, it could be an ice-ball from pole to pole unless it has a lot of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere.
These two share their star with three less hospitable planets, orbiting too close-in; and so too hot for liquid water.
With no land-masses and no chance for fire, it’s hard for us to visualize how any intelligent inhabitants could build a technological society on a totally oceanic world.
But imagine for a moment growing up on a planet from which you could see the lights of cities on another.
Surely that would give you a good reason to build spaceships…
For SPACE.com, I’m Dave Brody
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A planetary system 1200 light years from Earth may contain two worlds entirely covered by global oceans. Kepler 62e and 62f are in the habitable zone of a roughly Sun-like star. Each planet is slightly larger than Earth.
Credit: SPACE.com / NASA Ames Research Center / Kepler Mission

















