'Inexorable path to finding other Earths'

The New York Times just posted some exiting news - scientists have discovered a solar system that looks much like ours. It's neat that amateur astronomers were part of the discovery team, but the part I like best is this quote from a scientists who was not part of the discovery team:

Sara Seager, a theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not part of the team, said, “Right now in exoplanets we are on an inexorable path to finding other Earths.” She praised the new discovery as “a big step in finding out if our planetary system is alone.”

Here's some more of the article:

Astronomers say they have found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.

The discovery, they said, means that our solar system might be more typical of planetary systems across the universe than had been thought.

“It looks like a scale model of our solar system,” said Scott Gaudi of Ohio State University. He led an international team of 69 professional and amateur astronomers, who announced the discovery in a news conference with reporters Wednesday. on Their results are being published Friday in the journal Science.

In the newly discovered system, a planet about two-thirds of the mass of Jupiter and another about 90 percent of the mass of Saturn are orbiting a reddish star about half the mass of the Sun, at about half the distances that Jupiter and Saturn circle our own Sun.

Neither of the two giant planets is a likely abode for life as we know it, but, as Dr. Gaudi pointed out, warm, rocky planets — suitable for life — could exist undetected in the inner parts of the system. “This could be a true solar system analogue,” he said.

The whole article is here.