TRAPPIST-1 System & 7 Earth-like Planets

TRAPPIST-1 and the 7 Earth-like Planets

TRAPPIST-1 System is the new "solar" system. It is smaller and dimmer than the sun, and lies about 235 trillion miles far from us. Discover all news and updates about this amazing discovery here. Different theories regarding the origin of the earth just started again. Are we alone?

In a big unexpected surprise, on Wednesday 22th 2017 in a press conference, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) announced the new discovery of seven new planets (almost the same size of the earth), those planets are orbiting a star called Trappist-1 which lies about 40 light years away from us, it is relatively small distance in comparison with similar planets that have been discovered lately.

NASA added that there are too many stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which are very smaller than the sun, but although these stars are less in size, they can convert hydrogen into helium, with a brightness about 1000 times only lesser than the sun, one of these stars is Trappist-1 that is the star that includes the new planets.

The good news is that three (Exoplanets) of those seven planets appear to have the minimum and most important requirement of life and to live on, they are neither too cold nor too hot, they are almost as the same size of the earth, and there could be water and rock-floor.

Let's see what is TRAPPIST-1

TRAPPIST-1 stands for Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, it is smaller and dimmer than the sun, and lies about 235 trillion miles far from us.

Those seven new planets orbits range from 1.5 to 20 days, and lie closer to TRAPPIST-1 than our planets do around the sun, all of these planets if they were in our solar system, they can fit between the sun and the Mercury, they still have no names, they are known only by alphabetical order from A to H, where A refers to TRAPPIST-1 and the other alphabets goes to the planets, we still don't know too much about those planets, so we are expecting more research and discoveries about this new solar system.

Imagine if you are standing on the surface of one of the planets, you can see the geological features and the natural water features of the other planets, some of them may appear a little bit larger than the moon.

Those planets were observed by NASA's Spitzer telescope, and we are waiting for more future research that will be completed by the help of new modified tools and telescopes, one of those tools/telescope is James Webb Space Telescope, which is a large infrared telescope with huge seven meters mirror, we are waiting for its launch in October/2018.