NASA has spent years refuting the idea that life could exist anywhere else in the solar system, let alone our galaxy, yet, today NASA is proclaiming that not one, not two, but SEVEN potentially watery planets are rotating around a single star in a solar system not far from ours \u2013 a veritable copy-cat of Earth, and other planets in our solar system, perfectly capable of supporting life as we know it.<\/p>\n
As far as mainstream astronomy is concerned, this is a veritable treasure trove of life-supporting exoplanets. It is even more interesting that these exoplanets are all \u201cearth-sized.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n NASA\u2019s Spitzer Space Telescope has uncovered the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Several of the newly discovered planets are well within what is called \u201cthe habitable zone,\u201d<\/em> the area around a parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water \u2013 as in rivers, lakes, and oceans \u2013 and a known key to life.<\/p>\n Many scientists believe life evolved from alkaline hydrothermal vents on Earth. A hot fluid created from water which percolated down into newly formed rock under the seafloor where it reacted with minerals like olivine, producing a warm, brothy fluid rich in hydrogen, sulphides, and additional chemicals in a process called serpentinisation.<\/p>\n This hot fluid welled up into vents like those at the Lost City, a system discovered near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 2000.<\/p>\n This latest NASA discovery sets a record for the largest number of life-supporting planets found around a single star outside our solar system. It is possible that all seven planets could have watery surfaces.<\/p>\n The exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, named for the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile. It is about 40 light-years or 235 trillion miles from our own watery planet, in the constellation Aquarius.<\/p>\n Assisted by several ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope, Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of known planets in the system to seven from research conducted a few years ago.<\/p>\n