New solar system

This is the big news of the week, possibly of the decade for astronomy, the Kepler spacecraft has located 6 planets orbiting a star (Kepler-11) very similar in size to ours.

The really special bit of this story is the number of exoplanets discovered. Exoplanets are not a new find, but for many years the technology available was simply not accurate enough to locate small, earth sized planets.

It has always been know that many planets can orbit a single star (do I need to give an example?!), and we would have to be seriously ego centrical to assume we are the only solar system with multiple planets across the entire universe. But the fact that we have now been able to see these multiple planets, and more importantly seem them with light behind the (which allows spectroscopic analysis of the light passing through their atmospheres (if they have any), i.e. you can tell what is present within an atmosphere).

AND on top of all this the distance of the planets from their star is...well "normal", normal for us. About the orbits of Mercury and Venus.

The combination of 6 planets within such a small orbital distance of each other means, I would think, that the tidal forces across the planets when a few line up must be pretty...astronomical (see what I did there?). I wish, and I think this will be one of the great regrets of my life, that I am around to see the first exploration of distant worlds. Even putting a man on mars, which is entirely possible within my life-time (assuming we improve on the current shielding techniques to stop intense bursts of solar rays from frying anyone traveling across inter-planetary space), would blow my mind. The pinnacle of what is achievable with current technology?

Anyway at some point all this is going to make someone somewhere mention the Drake Equation.

And yes, it does impact the "chances" of alien life being around on other planets, simply by raising the number of plants we have seen orbiting suns. From the previous sample size of 1 (our solar system), and the few exoplanets (525 so far) that had been found, the number of stars you could say that (on average) circled the average star was low. But with the increased accuracy of these techniques I'm sure more and more will be found (pretty safe bet really!).