Late February saw NASA reveal that using the Spitzer Space Telescope, it had found seven new Earth-sized planets orbiting a star just 40 light-years away, or about 235 trillion miles from us.
This is the first time that astronomers have discovered another solar system with seven planets roughly the same size as ours. NASA figures that with the right atmospheric conditions, all seven could contain liquid surface water – though the chances of that are highest on the three Goldilocks.
“Should further observations uncover oxygen, methane, ozone and carbon dioxide in their atmospheres, it “would tell us there is life with 99 per cent confidence,” Michael Gillon, lead author of the paper and the principal investigator of the TRAPPIST exoplanet survey, said during the event.
This newly discovered Trappist-1 group lies in the Aquarius system and all seven planets are thought to be terrestrial planets like ours, rather than gas giants like Jupiter or icy dwarfs like Ceres.