Life may have evolved on at least three planets within a newly discovered solar system 39 light years from Earth. Astronomers at the NASA have discovered no less than seven roughly Earth-sized worlds orbiting a dwarf star in the system. Scientists had previously identified a tiny number of "exoplanets", which are believed to have the qualities needed to support life. However, the new system contains an unprecedented(前所未有) number of Earth-sized, probably rocky planets, and is being acknowledged as an "accelerated leap forward" in the search for extraterrestrial (外星球的)life.
Three of the new planets are said to be particularly promising because there might exist oceans. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA, told a press conference in Washington: "This gives us a hint that finding a second Earth is not a matter of 'if', but 'when'."
The planets were discovered using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which was able to track how fast each of the planets crossed the star Trappist-l and completed an orbit. From this the research team calculated how far the planets were from their star, and therefore how likely they are to be habitable.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is already being used to search for atmospheres around the planets. Future telescopes, including the proposed European Extremely Large Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, may be powerful enough to discover markers of life, such as oxygen in the atmospheres of exoplanets.
Astronomers believe there could be as many as 40 billion potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Prof Zurbuchen said that now was a "gold-rush phase" in the search for these exoplanets.
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