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Another Earth? 另一个地球? Home away from home 远离家乡的家 The existence of the most Earthlike planet yet has just been confirmed 类地球行星的存在已刚被确认 ONE of the more memorable slogans to come out of the climate-change talks in Durban over the past few days is: there is no planet B . But what if there were? Over the past couple of decades astronomers have logged thousands of so-called exoplanets worlds which orbit stars other than the sun. On December 5th the scientists in charge of Kepler, a space telescope designed to look for such planets, confirmed their instrument s discovery of its first Earthlike world. It is dubbed, rather unromantically, Kepler 22b. 在过去几天的Durban气候变化会谈上提出的较难忘的口号之一就是 没有星球B ，但是如果有呢?在过去的几十年内，天文学家记载了数以千计的所谓的 外行星 ---饶太阳以外的星球轨道运行的宇宙。12月5号，负责开普勒号的科学家确认他们的仪器发现了第一个类地球星体，开普勒号是专门为寻找这样的类地球星体而设计的太空望远镜。 The existence of this planet, which circles a star 600 light-years away, in the constellation of Lyra, had previously been suspected. Kepler, which belongs to NASA, America s space agency, works by observing dips in a star s brightness as a planet passes in front of it. It flags likely looking reductions as candidate planets , of which Kepler 22b was one. But three passes are needed to confirm a planet s existence, and Kepler 22b has now passed this test. Crucially, it orbits well within its star s Goldilocks zone : neither too close nor too far away for liquid water to exist on its surface. | 
