Awesome Astronomy

Following a recent NASA press conference – a regular event that fills us with dread as we anticipate an anticlimax – this time NASA really get us excited with the announcement of seven rocky Earth sized planets around a star 40 light years away. Three of these planets are in that star system’s habitable zone. Luckily our own resident exoplanet researcher, Jeni, is on hand to take us through the hunt and explain the science! In this podcast extra we discuss: The NASA announcement The international collaboration that made this discovery How exoplanets are discovered The significance of the find What this star system looks like Could life exist on any of these worlds? What the environmental conditions could be like so close to their parent star (image credit: NASA)