Science OT: Way Cool "Close" Star Has SEVEN Earth-Type Planets!!!

Even Hollywood never dared dream this up:  NASA today announced that a star "only" 39 lightyears from Earth has 7 planets closely orbiting it -- and each of the planets is 75% to 110% the size of Earth, and at least six of them are "rocky" (hard surfaces like Earth).  And at least 3 of them are in the "habitable" zone, meaning, they are at the right distance from the star where the heat from the star keeps water warm enough not to freeze and cool enough not to boil off.

http://www.space.com/35790-seven-earth-size-planets-trappist-1-discover…

There are some weird things about this system.  The star is barely bigger than Jupitor, and a thousand times less hot than our Sun.  So the 7 planets are all orbiting extremely close; one completes a full orbit in 1.5 days.  And the planets are "tidally locked," so each keeps the same face to the star (meaning, each one rotates on its axis at the same rate it orbits the star) -- which is exactly what our Moon does with the Earth.  This will cause the star-facing side to be much hotter than the other side, but an atmosphere and/or an ocean can distribute the heat (and there will be a very comfortable zone right at the horizon of where the star-facing side meets the other side).

You can bet NASA and scientists will be training telescopes on this system for years to come.  We eventually will figure out which of those planets has an atmosphere, and what gases make up that air.  We probably will even figure out mean surface temperatures, and perhaps if any have flowing water.  Detecting life at this distance is hard to imagine.  If the planets had seasons, you in theory could see changing colors on their surfaces (like forests of trees growing leaves) -- but tidally-locked planets won't have seasons, and given how fast these planets orbit that star, their seasons would only be hours or days long anyway.

A robotic or manned mission to this star will remain science fiction for now.  While incedibly close by galactic standards (that star is only 0.13% the distance from the Sun to the middle of the galaxy and Sag A*, the supermassive black hole in it), even our fastest-conceivable small robot would need thousands of years to get there at current technologies.