The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are the smallest planets outside the solar system confirmed around a star like the Sun, NASA said in a statement.
The planets are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.
"This discovery demonstrates for the first time that Earth-size planets exist around other stars, and that we are able to detect them," Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in the statement.
The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/us-nasa-planets-idUSTRE7BJ22E20111221
The planets are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.
"This discovery demonstrates for the first time that Earth-size planets exist around other stars, and that we are able to detect them," Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in the statement.
The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/us-nasa-planets-idUSTRE7BJ22E20111221
