A star named Trappist-1 after The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope that found it has seven earth-sized planets orbiting it, and three of them are the right distance for water to be liquid if they have water.
The Trappist scope saw two planets in orbit around the star, classed as an "ultra-cool dwarf." It's much smaller and cooler than our sun, so planets can be relatively near it and still be potentially habitable. Other telescopes, including the Spitzer Space Telescope, confirmed those two and found five more, which were announced today.
The star is only 39 light years from Earth, making it a fairly near neighbor as far as interstellar distances go. So someone get that frickin' warp drive up and running already.
1 comment:
I admit, my first thought on seeing that it was called "Trappist 7" was "On which planet do they brew the beer?"
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