Here’s Why The Newly Discovered Planets By NASA Is Actually A Big Deal

Ok we thought we would have to wait forever to start living on Mars but NASA announced yesterday that it has discovered seven new Earth sized planets (scientifically known as exoplanets). But they discover such planets every now and then but what makes this announcement special is that these planets are relatively closer to us than other and three of which have the potential to support life.

“This exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile. In May 2016, researchers using TRAPPIST announced they had discovered three planets in the system. Assisted by several ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory’s 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.”

TRAPPIST is located in the Aquarius constellation which is less than 40 light years from us or put in another way, 235 trillion miles/378 trillion Kilometers from us. TRAPPIST-1 is an very cold start that’s roughly the size of Jupiter and the fact they may have water also means life can flourish there but again for us to be able to live there, we have to do other things to live there. Like I said earlier NASA said at least three of these planets are in a habitable zone thereby making them immediate candidates that can support life.

NASA says the name TRAPPIST is named after a Chilean telescope which was used to spot exoplanets in the past.

Seeing as these planets are cold but have water, we may have to do something to warm up the planet to make it more habitable. That’s the same suggestion as what Elon Musk unveiled in a presentation titled “Making humans a multiplanetary species” back in September 2016 with respect to life on the red planet, Mars.

It looks like we could be having a new home and this is a big deal because we now have options including Mars.