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Three new, possibly habitable planets spotted! According to Michelle McGuinness of MSN News... Scientists say they have found three "super-Earths" in the habitable zone of the Gliese 667C system just 22 light-years away. Scientists believe they may have discovered three new nearby Earths. The European Southern Observatory said in a news release Tuesday that the constellation Scorpius, just 22 light-years away, has three "super-Earths" — planets larger than ours with the potential to have rocky surfaces. Even more exciting, the ESO said the planets are in Scorpius' habitable zone, an area near a star where water and, potentially, life could exist. The ESO said the planets are orbiting a faint star within a triple-star system. "Viewed from one of these newly found planets, the two other suns would look like a pair of very bright stars visible in the daytime, and at night they would provide as much illumination as the full moon," the news release says. The Scorpius system, or Gliese 667C, "is the first example of a system where such a low-mass star is seen to host several potentially rocky planets in the habitable zone," the ESO said in the news release. That makes the three super-Earths a record-breaking discovery: Gliese 667C is the first system ever found that has a fully packed habitable zone, meaning no more habitable planets could exist in its habitable zone. Previously, scientists found three total planets in Scorpius, but only one super-Earth, according to National Geographic. The ESO re-examined past data to uncover the two additional planets. "We knew that the star had three planets from previous studies, so we wanted to see whether there were any more," ESO astronomer Mikko Tuomi said in the news release. "By adding some new observations and revisiting existing data, we were able to confirm these three and confidently reveal several more. Finding three low-mass (super-Earth) planets in the star's habitable zone is very exciting." In 2011, CNN reported that the ESO had found 50 new planets outside our solar system, including 16 super-Earths. The ESO said small systems such as Scorpius orbiting stars similar to our sun are abundant in the Milky Way. But often the nearby planets are too hot to be habitable. Gliese 667C is a cooler, dimmer star; even though the three super-Earths are as close to it as Mercury is to our sun, they’re cool enough to be habitable, the ESO said. Now if we could just travel there and find those darn Halo rings, lol! I don't expect to see "space travel" in my lifetime but hopefully my children or grandchildren will. Would you be willing to go? Complete story and image courtesy of MSN_News.com.
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