TRAPPIST-1 star system found to have 7 rocky worlds

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And 3 of them are in the habitable zone.

In case you have been living under a rock, exoplanet astronomers recently discovered 7 planets around a tiny star 39 light years away using the transit method. This is pretty amazing, people have freaked out in the past about finding one Earth sized world in the habitable zone of it's star like Alpha Centauri Bb but 3 of them in one system is unheard of. Our own star system only has two planets in the habitable zone (Earth and Mars) and Mars does show evidence of having oceans once before Solar wind got rid of most of the atmosphere and made it into a cold desert. Analyzing the gravitational interaction of these planets and their star and seeing how much light they block has lead to the conclusion that they are all at a density consistent with being rocky.

It's a shame that we won't be able to visit that star system in my life time, even if a space ship could cruise on over there at the speed of light tomorrow it would be a 39 year trip and another 39 years before we could hear back from it. This is still a very exciting discovery though.

We can't get there from here, with current techology.

It IS exciting. And unexpected.

Like being run over by stampeding unicorns. Finding one earth sized planet in a solar system, and having that one be in the earth-like sweet spot in that solar system was assumed to be a rare find. But here we have a traffic jam of them.

The nearest planet to the Sun in our solar system is Mercury. The farthest of the seven planets around Trappist-1 is only one sixth the distance from its sun as Mercury is from our Sun. All seven would be baking worse than mercury if not for the fact that Trappist is a red dwarf that puts out such feeble radiation that four of the seven get similar candle power from their star as Earth gets from the Sun.

Red dwarfs have flairs that would probably incinerate life over the long run. But maybe little green men from an earthlike planet in yet another star system have colonized the several earth like worlds around it in geologically recent times.

It is unlikely that humans will develop a NAFAL (nearly as fast as lightspeed) vessel any time in the next 1000 years or perhaps longer. There is not even a glimmer in the physics that that is feasible.

I for one am really hoping that the Accubore drive ends up working, I get that there is a pretty high chance of it being impossible to do in practice even though it's possible in theory but it would be very cool to be able to go faster then light without any kind of time dilation.

This find was very unlikely indeed, especially this close by.

Any chance of colonisation is theoretical at best, as we do not even know the atmosphere composition of the 3 "habitable" ones, not even if they have one at all (at least, i haven't heard anything about it).

Reaching them is doable with our current tech; within a few generations (if you send a 5-year-old, its grandchildrens' children might reach the system); assuming we can fix the psychological issues, and shield from radiation.

True, but that will likely change after the launch of the James Webb space telescope.

I've heard that all seven planets are likely to be tidally locked. Permanent day on one side, permanent night on the other, extreme temperatures except around the terminator. All the water on the "habitable" planets may have ended up on their dark sides, as kilometers-thick crusts of ice. The weather is also likely to be extreme. One theory says tidally locked planets that have atmospheres will have perpetual winds stronger than hurricanes, redistributing the heat. There may well be life somewhere on those three planets, but humans and other Earth life are unlikely to thrive there.

Tidal locking is not actually necessarily a deal-breaker when it comes to the possibility of life on those worlds because what really matters is the atmosphere. If the heat from the one side manages to get around to the other and cold air from the other side could get to the sunny side due to atmospheric whether patterns then a tidally locked planet can possibly still have the right temperatures all around.

In any case, this search for extra-terrestrial life is starting to sound like my experiences on OKCupid (is there any life out there?)