New planets discovered could harbor life but don’t expect us to find out
Researchers at NASA say they have found three new planets that could harbor life.
NASA says that it has discovered three new planets that may be capable of supporting life.
The space agency's Kepler space telescope found the three planets in the constellation Lyra, 1200 light-years from Earth.
The three are all larger than Earth and have rather uninspiring names.
Kepler-62f, Kepler-62e and Kepler-69c are between 1.4 and 1.7 times larger than our world.
Kepler-69c may be the most Earth-like planet ever discovered.
It is the smallest planet ever found in the habitable range of its star.
More from GlobalPost: Habitable planet discovered circling Tau Ceti, a star close to Earth
"We're moving very rapidly toward finding an Earth analogue around a star like the sun," Kepler science principal investigator Bill Borucki, of NASA's Ames Research Center, told Space.com.
All are in the range of their suns where liquid could exist – 37 to 65 million miles away.
Sadly, the chances of ever knowing if these planets contain life are very small given how far away they are and how difficult it would be to travel at the speed of light.
NASA announced the findings at a news conference Thursday along with a paper in the journal Science.