Nightly News   |  September 30, 2010

New planet has life-sustaining potential

Astronomers say they have spotted an Earth-like and potentially habitable planet orbiting in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

Share This:

This content comes from a Full-Text Transcript of the program.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor (Washington, DC): Well, you may have heard the news, astronomers are excited because they think they found a place that could be a lot like home. It's a rocky planet . They say it's about 20 light years away, but that's practically nothing in astronomer terms. And it's more like Earth than anything else found thus far outside our own solar system. That's why this discovery has planet watchers so excited.

Mr. NEIL DeGRASSE TYSON (Hayden Planetarium Director): We're barely on the way to the moon or Mars , much less the nearby stars. But it offers us some glimmer of hope for a universe in which we're not alone but joined by other life forms, possibly even intelligent.

WILLIAMS: Now, the astronomers are calling their discovery a Goldilocks planet, not too cold, not too hot, possibly just right to sustain water and perhaps life. And it's just nice to know that if we screw this place up badly enough, there is someplace we can