C12-3: Astronomers Discover 7 Earth-sized Planets

On CNN, an interesting discovery was reported. According to NASA, there are seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a nearby star. The star is 40 light years away from Earth, and the planets are considered exoplanets. An exoplanet is a planet that revolves around another star than ours, the sun. The seven planets discovered are said to be seven of a possible 3,500 that are in our universe. NASA plans to pay closer attention to the seven new planets, because at least three of these planets possibly harbor life and have oceans of water. They are not gaseous planets like Jupiter, and this is an extremely cool discovery that was published in Nature magazine and worked on by the government and astronomers in Belgium through a network of telescopes. The government has recently reduced their funding to NASA, however, discoveries like these are said to increase the interest again. Hopefully President Trump will see the importance of this discovery and give it more funding, because it could be our new home in a few decades.