Using a potent NASA space telescope to scan the skies for planets like ours where life might exist, astronomers say they have found the most Earth-like candidates yet.

Two of the five planets orbiting a sun-like star called Kepler-62 are squarely in what astronomers call the habitable zone – not too hot, not too cold and possibly bearing water, researchers said in the journal Science.

Astronomers detected the planets by observing their star dim when the planets pass in front of it, in what is known as a "transit".

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