New Planets Could Host Life, Do You Think Other Intelligent Life Exist?

Scientists announced Thursday the discovery of three planets in a "habitable zone," outside our own solar system. NASA's Kepler mission, described the trio as super-Earth-size planets.

Scientists do not know whether life could exist on the newfound planets, but their discovery signals we are another step closer to finding a world similar to Earth around a star like our sun.

The Kepler space telescope, which monitors the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, is NASA's first mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets around stars like our sun.

Two of the newly discovered planets orbit a star smaller and cooler than the sun. One of the planets, referred to as Kepler-62f, is only 40 percent larger than Earth, making it the exoplanet closest to the size of our planet known in the habitable zone of another star. Kepler-62f is likely to have a rocky composition. Another of the planets is called Kepler-62e and orbits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is roughly 60 percent larger than Earth.

The third planet, Kepler-69c, is 70 percent larger than the size of Earth, and orbits in the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. Astronomers are uncertain about the composition of Kepler-69c, but its orbit of 242 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our neighboring planet Venus.

What do you think? Does intelligent life exist outside of our solar system?