Nasa release virtual tour of Earth-like planet 1d | Daily Mail Online

The Trappist-1 star system sits just 39 light years from Earth, and astronomers say we’ll know if it hosts life in around a decade. The virtual tour shows what planet 1d may look like.

No other star system discovered before has been found to have such a large number of Earth-sized planets.

The planets likely have rocky compositions like Earth, are around the same size as our planet, and six have surface temperatures between 0-100°C (32-212°F).

This gives these planets some of the vital atmospheric conditions needed to grow biological life. 

The researchers suggest that three of the seven planets, found in the system’s ‘habitable zone’, could have oceans of water with life evolving on them already.

‘We now have seven planets that we can study in detail for life, and this is something we are already doing,’ lead-author Michaël Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liège, Belgium, said.

‘People will hear more and more about this system in the coming months and years.’

Each planet, labelled 1b-1h, was found via telescopes using the ‘transit’ method.

This is when the orbit and other properties of planets are measured as they pass in front of their star, causing it to briefly dim.

An international group of researchers used a series of space and ground-based telescopes to find the seven planets in the Trappist-1

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Nasa release virtual tour of Earth-like planet 1d | Daily Mail Online