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Alien skies SEVEN Earth-sized planets line up neatly next to their tiny star. The first is far too hot, its surface probably a morass of lava. The seventh is much too cold and may even be frozen solid. But the middle planet? That one could be just right. Among the thousands of planets orbiting other stars we have so far discovered, this one may be the most promising place to hunt for life. Even as the first members of this system of planets were discovered almost exactly a decade ago, it was obvious that this was a thrilling find. The star they orbit, known as TRAPPIST-1, is an M dwarf, the smallest, coolest type of star, which meant there was a decent chance of being able to study its planets in detail. It is also fairly nearby in cosmic terms, being only about 40 light years away, and has an orbit aligned perfectly for us to observe it. “There’s been a lot of effort to find more systems like this, and we just haven’t found any,” says exoplanet researcher Ana Glidden at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The fourth planet from the star, TRAPPIST-1e, is where most attention is focused, thanks... https://www.newscientist.com/interactives/sh/an-alien-sky/index.html