Elise Cutts reports that its “just 146 light-years away.” Just!
Approx 1.38 quadrillion kilometres
Like one light year is approx 9 trillion kilometres and yet we’re still able to take a fricken observation of a planet 146x that incredible distance.
I suppose the atmosphere adds much more to the “earthiestness” than the precise equality of size and speed to the Earth standards.
For sci-fi purposes of human settlement I think size and speed are probably more important. For human settlement purposes the planet needs to be dense enough that we don’t drift away and that we can reasonably create a society on its surface, while light enough that we don’t get crushed. We evolved for gravity on earth, and so did all the crops and whatever we’d like to bring with us. So size/gravity close to earth is good.
And then speed relates to distance from the nearest star, as the article touches upon. Move faster and it gets warmer as the planet is spinning close to the star, move slower and orbit is further away and too cold. So if the planet is earth-like and the star has similar qualities to our sun, we’d also need it to move at a similar speed.
If we had the technology to settle in this place we would probably also have the technology to engineer a decent atmosphere.
That said, it’s all fiction anyway. I’m pretty sure we’re permanently stuck on the piece of rock that we’re currently busy making unlivable.
