Does Earth Have A Twin?

Astronomers on verge of finding Earth's twin
Planet hunters say doppelgänger is almost surely hiding in our galaxy ESO.

A doppelganger is a ghostly counterpart of a living person or a living earth. Wouldn't it be interesting to see another earth just like ours here. What couldn't we learn by studying this planet, and maybe by communicating to its inhabitants.

Have it's people progressed as far (or farther) than people living on earth? What were the consequences of their adopting complex systems and leaving behind the simple form of life they may have started with? Do they have golbal warming issues? Is global warming a true concept, something that will end civilization as we know it because of greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere six degrees?

Have they experienced a cataclysmic event that changed their planet? Oh, what a great scientific breakthrough this could be. We would want to absorb their experience, just as a boy sitting at the feet of his father absorbs the wisdom of age. I can't say it enough, oh, would that be interesting--maybe even earth- and population-saving.

An artist's impression shows a trio of super-Earths detected by an European team after five years of monitoring.

See highlights from the shuttle Discovery’s flight, the Phoenix Mars Lander mission and much more in June’s roundup of cosmic pictures at Space.com

Three super-Earths found around one star! Imagine that!

Planet hunters say it's just a matter of time before they lasso Earth's twin, which almost surely is hiding somewhere in our star-studded galaxy.

Momentum is building: Just last week, astronomers announced they had discovered three super-Earths — worlds more massive than ours but small enough to most likely be rocky — orbiting a single star. And dozens of other worlds suspected of having masses in that same range were found around other stars.

"Being able to find three Earth-mass planets around a single star really makes the point that not only may many stars have one Earth, but they may very well have a couple of Earths," said Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C.

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