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Today’s adorable Google Doodle celebrates the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets

Today’s adorable Google Doodle celebrates the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets

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Awwww

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Google is celebrating yesterday’s amazing announcement that seven Earth-sized planets have been spotted orbiting around a small star 40 light-years away. Today’s Google Doodle is an animation of the Earth and the Moon looking at the newly discovered solar system through a telescope. When they find the seven planets, they smile wide and cheer. It’s so cute you’ll feel yourself going, awwwww.

the best places to look for alien life

Yesterday’s discovery is particularly exciting because six of the planets may have the right temperatures for liquid water to exist on their surfaces. That makes them the best places to look for alien life. The system — which revolves around the star TRAPPIST-1 — is also relatively close to us, so it’ll be a bit easier for our telescopes to spy on to get more information about the worlds.

The news of TRAPPIST-1 and its planets went viral yesterday, with NASA releasing a VR experience of the surface of one of the planets, TRAPPIST-1d, and a travel poster of the solar system. I love today’s Doodle because it captures the excitement we humans feel when wondering about other worlds and extraterrestrial life. It’s the infinite quest of discovering whether we’re all alone in the Universe. Winston Churchill wondered about that, too. Don’t you?