Nearby star has 7 "Earthlike" planets

TRAPPIST-1 is a star that's 39 light years away from us. The journal Nature reports that it has seven warm, Earthlike planets orbiting it.

From Washington Post:

The discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, represents the first time astronomers have ever detected so many terrestrial planets orbiting a single star. Researchers say the system is an ideal laboratory for studying alien worlds and could be the best place in the galaxy to search for life beyond Earth.

"Before this, if you wanted to study terrestrial planets, we had only four of them and they were all in our solar system," said lead author Michail Gillon, an exoplanet researcher at the University of Liige in Belgium. "Now we have seven Earth-sized planets to expand our understanding. Yes, we have the possibility to find water and life. But even if we don't, whatever we find will be super interesting."

Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech