Is 2017 causing you extreme anxiety and a desire to relocate somewhere stress-free? You might soon enjoy a very odd way out of this chaotic country by moving to... a different planet.
Yesterday, NASA scientists discovered seven previously unknown Earth-sized planets orbiting around a nearby dwarf star (Trappist-1) that can potentially harbor water, which means that humans could potentially set up camp there.
"This is the first time so many planets of this kind are found around the same star," said Michael Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liege in Belgium, in an official NASA press release.
The exoplanets (aka: planets not part of our solar system) are a mere 40 light-years, or 235 trillion miles, away—which, in astrology jargon, means pretty close.
And, yes, aliens might actually be living on them. “I think that we have made a crucial step toward finding if there is life out there,” said Amaury H. M. J. Triaud, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge in England who is also part of the research team. “Here, if life managed to thrive and releases gases similar to that we have on Earth, then we will know.”
Check out these renderings of the planets, created by NASA:
