Science Finds 7 "Earth-Like" Planets Orbiting "Nearby" Star
JUST IN: NASA announces the discovery of at least 7 Earth-like planets orbiting the same star 40 light-years away https://t.co/EKg2ckzKYQ pic.twitter.com/pl7XbYBpfy
— CNN International (@cnni) February 22, 2017
CNN — Astronomers have found at least seven Earth-like planets orbiting the same star 40 light-years away, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The findings were also announced at a news conference at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
This discovery outside of our solar system is rare because the planets have the winning combination of being similar in size to Earth and being all temperate, meaning they could have water on their surfaces and potentially support life.
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Daily Mail — Though all seven planets could have liquid water, three of them – 1e, 1f, 1g – have the right atmospheric conditions to hold oceans of water at their surface.
These oceans may have already evolved life, though co-author Dr Amaury Triaud told MailOnline that the researchers cannot possibly know at what stage this life might be.
‘We only know the star is older than half a billion years and likely the planets are too, so far we do not know if there is liquid water and even less if there is life,’ he said.
Sup science. Look, I’m a huge astronomy guy. I mean who isn’t? We’ve all been down the rabbit hole of watching every space documentary there is on Netflix. We’ve all fallen for Neil deGrasse Tyson describing the cosmos in a way that makes us want to buy it a nice dinner and fuck it. Love space, but science basically has one hand left to reveal and one hand only and that’s aliens.
Don’t come at me with 7 new planets. Don’t come at me with “earth-like.” Don’t come at me with “nearby” star that’s actually 40 lightyears away aka would take several, several generations of humans to get to. I don’t need that shit and it does nothing for me.
Let me know when we find aliens. That’s it. We did the moon thing — all that’s left is aliens. Maybe I’ll tune in for boots on the ground on Mars but outside of that, it’s aliens or bust.