PHOTO: NASA’s Spitzer Telescope discovers seven new Earth like planets, insisting there could be life out there

The seven discovered planets, is said to be a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system....

...as three out of the seven, are firmly located in habitable zone... the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water.

According to NASA, all of these seven planets could have liquid water key to life, as under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone...

Thomas Zurbuchen  who is the associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, while speaking on this, said:

“This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life,”

. “Answering the question ‘are we alone’ is a top science priority and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal.”

At about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as exoplanets.

This exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile., 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.

The new results were published Wednesday in the journal Nature, and announced at a news briefing at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Source:NASA.gov