Researchers find planets by examining the brightness of stars as a function of time; brightness drops when a potential planet crosses the star. Three transits are required for a planet confirmation. The period of the transit of the newly discovered second earth 'Kepler 22-b' was 7.4 hours. It did not appear to give off its own light, indicating it is a planet and not a star. Scientists do not yet have a measurement of the mass of Kepler 22-b, which would tell them more about the composition of the planet. This summer, when the planet's star will be high in the sky, ground-based telescopes can attempt to get its mass. The planet is even more mysterious because its radius is between that of Earth and Uranus and Neptune, both of which have radii about four times the size of Earth's. So we don't know what a planet in this size range typically looks like. Is life restricted to Earth, or could it exist somewhere like Kepler 22-b? It may be that the char
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