Weird Worlds: Kepler 22b

It's what all the cool kids are (still) talking about, so why not a post on it? In the glut of Kepler mission transiting planets, a new planet has risen to the fore as the possibly most Earthlike extrasolar planet. Huzzah! (And in a few months yet another new planet will take its place. Just watch).

Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
What we know

Kepler 22 is a star very similar to our sun. It is slightly smaller (0.98 times the radius of the sun) and slightly smaller (0.97 times the mass of the...