More Earth-like Exoplanets Found
by Carl Kruse
The journal NATURE’s website reportedly crashed after it announced the
NASA discovery of seven Earth-like planets orbiting a star near us, some 40
light years away in the Aquarius constellation.
The star known as TRAPPIST-1 (Transiting Planets and Planetisimals Small
Telescope) was observed by a Belgian research team with data collected
from NASA’s space-based Spitzer telescope .
This graphic provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech shows an artist’s illustration
of what the TRAPPIST-1 planet system might look like. The planets circle
about the dwarf star Trappist-1, about the size of Jupiter. Three are in the
so-called Goldilocks zone, where liquid water and, possibly life, could exist.
The others are right on the doorstep.
Three of the seven planets are in the “Goldilocks” range, or possibly
habitable, as they are the right distance from the star so that liquid water
could exist on the surface. That gives the star system the record for the
largest number of goldilocks-zone planets found orbiting a single star.
TRAPPIST-1 is a dwarf star and will continue to burn for trillions of years,
potentially more than enough time for life to develop, especially on those
planets in the habitable zone.
Our Milky Way is 100,000 light years wide, the visible universe billions of
light years in every direction, and so a distance of 40 light years makes
TRAPPIST-1 our cosmic neighbor.