I tend to get excited when I read the phrase ‘earth-like planet’ because I visualize one of the earth-like planets from Star Trek (because most were) where they had trees, and quaint, little villages, and lots of people walking around wearing togas or some damned thing.
Yet all scientists mean by earth-like is approximate size (which means it’s probably a rocky planet) and within its star’s Goldilocks zone. Proxima B (we’ve got to find a better name than that -if it’s an earth-like planet,it deserves an earth-like name. I suggest Audrey.) is indeed earth-like in size, just a wee bit bigger, and it is in its planets goldilocks zone although it is much, much closer to its sun than we are. A year on Audrey is only 11 days. But, it’s planet is a red dwarf, so it’s not as hot as ours, and it’s red, not yellow.
In summary, it’s years are only 11 days long, which is less earth-like than Westeros, and everybody has a birthday every couple of weeks, and its sky is probably a different color (we’ve got a yellow sun and a blue sky, if they’ve got a red sun, they must have a ____ sky, I’m sure there’s a way of mathematically working that out and you’d probably have to factor in the various elements in their atmosphere, if they have one, so it could be any color really, and they might or might not have water, but other than that, it’s very earth-like.
I suppose it’s worth looking into deeper, in any event.
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