Off the wire
• Roundup: Tehran conference on Palestine urges unity against Israel  • Israel upgrades its Iron Dome missile defense system  • Feature: Greece struggling to improve conditions for refugees year after border closures  • Majority of Americans fear U.S. will become engaged in another war: poll  • Nigerian police confirm kidnapping of German scholars  • Nigerian military condemns Amnesty report on military operations  • Urgent: Scientists discover 7 terrestrial exoplanets around nearby star  • Two Germans kidnapped in Nigeria  • Kenya keeps ban on poultry products from Uganda  • News Analysis: Votes for Wilders come from many corners in the Netherlands  
You are here: 　 Home

1st LD: Scientists discover 7 Earth-sized exoplanets around nearby star

Xinhua, February 23, 2017 Adjust font size:

A compact analogue of our inner solar system about 40 light-years aways has been discovered, NASA announced during a press conference on Wednesday.

An international team of astronomers using powerful space telescopes and ground-based observatories have discovered the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star.

The discovery sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system, according to NASA.

The exoplanet system, which is called TRAPPIST-1, is relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius.

"Looking for life elsewhere, this system is probably our best bet as of today," Brice-Olivier Demory, professor at the University of Bern's Center for Space and Habitability and one of the authors of the Nature paper, said in a statement. Endit