Earth has a twin planet as scientists have found a planet similar in size, and content to the third planet from the sun a press release from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reported.
"This planet is a complete mystery," David Latham an astronomer at the Center (CfA) said in a statement. "We don't know how it formed or how it got to where it is today. What we do know is that it's not going to last forever. Kepler-78b is the poster child for this new class of planets."
The planet, named Kepler-78b is 20 percent bigger than the earth whose distance from its center to one side is 9,200 miles the press release reported. The planet is also twice as heavy as the earth, and therefore has just as much density as the globe. It also possibly has a formation of iron and rock just like our planet.
"Kepler-78b is going to end up in the star very soon, astronomically speaking," Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer at CfA said in a statement. "It couldn't have formed in place because you can't form a planet inside a star. It couldn't have formed further out and migrated inward, because it would have migrated all the way into the star. This planet is an enigma."
Kepler-78b which rounds a star 400 light years from the earth, is also part of a new class of planets NASA has pinpointed through data from its Kepler Spacecraft, which the administration uses to see what other planets are capable of having life.
The planets circle the stars they are associated with no more than 12 hours at a time the press release reported.
Researchers used a spectrograph, or device that gives off radiation, to study the planet at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, Calif.
