In our lifetimes we will encounter other intelligent life, if only at a distance. The same survey that found this habitable planet found 22 more, by observing a tiny patch of sky.

We better get working on warp drive, it's 600 light years away, that's roughly 3,600 trillion miles.

Ah fuck it go ahead and add to the moronic din. What do I care.

As far as I've read, the only things we know are the size of the planet and the distance from its star. We have no idea of the exact mass (other than that it's relatively low, which is a good thing), composition, atmosphere, or actual habitability of the planet, just that it's located in the "habitable zone". That is all!

So, no, we have no clue if there's water and since temperature is subject to other factors (the one's which we have no information on yet) besides solely the distance from its star, we can't really say it's life-sustaining either.

Moving this video to Mauru's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

*updated description

Here's some follow up stuff:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16040655

"The planet, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C.
It is the closest confirmed planet yet to one like ours - an "Earth 2.0".
However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid."

Its kind of missing the point. Kepler 22b isn't really that extraordinary. As it turns out finding planets is relatively easy, and good number of them share some characteristic of earth. Kepler 22b might be the closest approximation so far, but its not exactly alone in the catagory of earth like planets...and we've barely started looking. I've no doubt that in time it'll be joined by more similar to it and probably some even more similar to earth. So ya. Quite an ordinary planet really - thats whats extraordinary about this.

Scifi?