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Three more Earth-like planets have been discovered by the Kepler Telescope, and it is becoming clear to scientists that there are Earth-like planets "everywhere," according to Kepler scientist Tom Barclay. Two of the planets are 1,200 light years away, and the other is 2,700 light years distant.

Kepler 62f and Kepler 62e are the closest to Earth-like. They both orbit a somewhat dimmer star than our own in the constellation Lyra, 1,200 light years away. Traveling at 99% of the speed of light, a starship would pass one day for every year that would pass on Earth. Such a ship could reach the newly discovered solar system in about 6 ship years, but more than a millennium would pass on Earth.
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Using NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, astronomers are beginning to find Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. A new analysis of Kepler data shows that about 17% of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there. The odds are that at least ONE of these harbors intelligent life.

Altogether, researchers have found that 50% of stars have a planet of Earth-size or larger in a close orbit. By adding larger planets, which have been detected in wider orbits up to the orbital distance of the Earth, this number reaches 70%. In other words, practically all Sun-like stars have planets.
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The most common type of star in the Milky Way is called a red dwarf–these are smaller, cooler, and longer-lived than our sun. There are 160 BILLION of them in our galaxy and 40% of them have Earth-like planets orbiting them at the right distance for liquid water to exist on their surfaces, a condition that is necessary for life.
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Will 2012 be the year we discover another planet that has intelligent life on it? Researchers have detected two planets of sizes comparable to Earth orbiting a star similar to our own Sun. This means there could be life on either one–or both–of them. Astronomers don’t expect to find ETs there, but they do hope to eventually spot something that could eventually evolve into creatures like us.

The discovery is the first confirmation that planets the size of Earth and smaller exist outside our Solar System, and that we can find them with Kepler Space Telescope, which so far has spotted more than 2,300 planets that could contain life.
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