Scientists said, “We're very close to finding another Earth.”“We believe we're very, very close in terms of technology and science to actually finding the other Earth and our chance to find signs of life on another world,” said Sara Seager, a MacArthur Fellow and professor of planetary science and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A team of astronomers announced April 17, 2014, that they have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the so-called "habitable zone" -- the distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface. That doesn't mean this planet has life on it, says Thomas Barclay, a scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames and a co-author of a paper on the planet, called Kepler-186f. He says the planet can be thought of as an "Earth-cousin rather than an Earth-twin. It has many properties that resemble Earth." The planet was discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. It's located about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The picture above is an artist's concept of what it might look like.