Article here. Very, very exciting stuff!
In short, the star is Trappist-1, a tiny dwarf star (about 10% the size of our sun). That means low light and heat compared to our sun. The planets are very close, so close that their orbits appear to be tidally locked (the same side of the planet always faces the sun, such that one side is always day time and one side is always night), but the sun is cool enough that 3 of them may be in the “habitable zone” in which liquid water can exist.
The planets are also ideally suited for atmospheric observation, since they pass in front of their star and we can look at the light that refracts through the atmosphere – this may tell us if there is oxygen present.
Its cool until our new intergalactic overlords show themselves. :o
Forty light years? That means inhabitants of the Trappist system are now receiving transmissions of whatever televisions shows were being broadcast here in 1977.
Let’s see, that would be shows like Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley or Three’s Company.
Fascinating but unfortunately:
Planet #1 (closest to Sun) citizens really pissed that they can’t find any shade. Have made up elaborate conspiracy theory about how Planet #7 got them there
Planet #2 people really hate planet #3 people for reasons no one can explain
Planet #4 constantly disses Planet #5 for being “small”
Red Planet #6 doesn’t understand why all the other planets can’t get along and just be red like they are
Planet #7 citizens constantly whine about feeling very left out of the whole thing
They will nuke us.
It’s even worse than that. They’ll also be tuning into the likes of ‘Disco Duck’, ‘Convoy’, and ‘The Streak’.
Mercy sakes.
mmm
We’re doomed!
They’ll think that disco is our primary method of communication, and Donna Summer is our Supreme Leader.
This is getting worse and more worse.
Point of order: Although the VOX article credits NASA “along with partners around the world”, the TRAPPIST instrument that discovered those exoplanets is Belgian, financed mostly by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) and the Liège University (website with info here: http://www.trappist.ulg.ac.be/cms/c_3300885/en/trappist-portail), and it is installed in the ESO (European Southern Observatory) in Chile, in the mountains of La Silla. The US does not participate in the ESO.
As a matter of fact, although the TRAPPIST instrument has some automatic capabilities, it is actually controlled from Liège, in Belgium, 12000 km away. The team that made the discovery, headed by Michaël Gillion (mentioned in the VOX article), works at the Institut d’Astrophysique et Géophysique at the University of Liège.
Of course, the ESO cooperates with NASA and there are exchanges of information as well as letting NASA use some instruments at times – however, the article makes it look like NASA was the moving force behind the whole research and the discovery, when that was absolutely not the case.
Links for more info:
Just setting the record straight!
This is amazing news. Science is wonderful.
Who are you, and what have you done with Quartz? Is he being held prisoner in Belgium? :dubious:
This is obviously the location of the Bizarro world.
And the likelihood of extraterrestrial life remains the same: unknown. It’s fun to watch the data pile up, though. Science are cool…
Google Doodle celebrating this discovery. It looks like **Profound Gibberish **may be right.
You’re talking about the original discovery of three planets. The recent announcement added four more planets, and the observations were made from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
Of course the Belgians deserve full credit for the original discovery, and as you say the system is named after their instrument, but NASA absolutely was the force behind the new discoveries.
Thanks for the clarification! Ignorance fought! 
For names, I propose:
Doc
Happy
Grumpy
Sleepy
Sneezy
Bashful
Dopey.
Heck, it beats “George”
Great, now we’ll have them coming over every eighty years, asking to borrow stuff…