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IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

Our solar system’s “twin” discovered

• dvice

Perhaps one of the most exciting discoveries, though, is of a new planetary system that is very much like our own.
Astrophysicists discovered this new planetary system, KOI-351, while poring over the massive amounts of data coming in from the Kepler telescope. KOI-351 has at least seven planets that orbit a star. And much like our own solar system, the rocky planets are closest to this system’s version of the Sun, while the gaseous planets are furthest away.
 
The first three of these planets have orbital cycles similar to our own, nearly mimicking the orbits of Mercury, Venus and Earth. However, because these cycles varied a bit, the team of astrophysicists looked more closely at the data and discovered four more planets.