Even though NASA called the recent Kepler Space Telescope discovery the “Earth’s twin” – will Voltes V fans call it Voltes V’s planet Bozania?
By: Ringo Bones
Remember back in 2011 when the Kepler Space Telescope discovered
Kepler-16b, that extrasolar planet /exoplanet that orbited around two parent stars akin to
the Star Wars’ planet Tatooine that 1977 era astrophysicists says is impossible? Well, the Kepler Space Telescope’s recent
discovery back in July 23, 2015 revealed a planet that will not only rouse
interest to those people in search of Earth-like planets outside of our own solar
system, but also to Voltes V fans who might see a resemblance between planet
Bozania and planet Kepler-452b.
Unlike the Saturnus or Saturn-like planet Bozania with its
dual Saturn-like rings, Kepler-452b at the moment appears to have no rings
around it as seen by the Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler-452b appears to be
60-percent larger than Earth and its surface gravity pull appears to be twice
that on the surface of the Earth so a 150-pound earthling would weigh
300-pounds on Kepler-452b. The planet appears to orbit within the habitable
zone of the sun-like G-Type star Kepler-452 and takes 381 earth-days to orbit
its present star so it’s “year” is slightly longer than planet Earth’s.
Given that Kepler-452b is a billion years older than Earth,
any advanced life forms on the planet could likely be more technologically
advanced than us earthlings. But given its star is a billion years older than
our sun, it might be nearing its “Red Giant” phase and might be subjecting
Kepler-452b much higher amounts of energy than our Earth gets from the sun.
Even though Kepler-452b is 10-times closer to Earth at 1,400 light-years or 430
parsecs in comparison to Voltes V’s planet Bozania, which is 14,096.24
light-years or 4324 parsecs away from Earth, it did manage to peak the interest
of “mere” science fiction fans to the world of real astronomy and the finer
points of astrophysics.
