First Earth-sized planets spottedPallab Ghosh By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News
The planets may once have harboured conditions favourable to life
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Astronomers have detected the first Earth-sized planets, which are orbiting a star similar to our own Sun.
In the distant past they may have been able to support life and one of them may have had conditions similar to our own planet - a so-called Earth-twin - according to the research team.
They have described their findings as the most important planets ever discovered outside our Solar System.
Details of the discovery are outlined in Nature journal.
Dr Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, US, who led the research, said that the discovery was the beginning of a "new era" of discovery of many more planets similar to our own.
Both planets are now thought to be too hot to be capable of supporting life.
But according to Dr Fressin, the planets were once further from their star and cool enough for liquid water to exist on their surface, which is a necessary condition for life.
"We know that these two planets may have migrated closer to their Sun," he told BBC News. "(The larger of the two) might have been an Earth twin in the past. It has the same size as Earth and in the past it could have had the same temperature".
Rock and a hard place
One of the planets, named Kepler 20f, is almost exactly the size of the Earth. Kepler 20e is slightly smaller at 0.87 times the radius of Earth and is closer to its star than 20f.
They are both much closer to their star than the Earth is to the Sun and so they complete an orbit much more quickly: 20e circles its star in just six days, 20f completes an orbit in 20 days whereas the Earth takes a year.