Trio of Super-Earths Discovered

The key to way-in-the-future human existence is probably going to mean hopping to another planet. To that end, we need to find another one to hop to at some point. Luckily, people are spending lots of money on getting us into space and on finding our future home with newer and more precise terrestrial technology.

Some European scientists have discovered a trio of Earthlike planets a mere 42 light-years away (that's the distance it takes for light to travel in 42 years.) They used a new instrument called HARPS to discover the system revolving around the star HD 40307, a slightly less-massive star than our own sun. This artist's conception, otherwise known as total guesswork, shows what the three super-Earths, aka exoplanets more massive than Earth, would look like.

There's no way to know how much like Earth these planets are with the present data, or if they would be hospitable to humans, but I say, let's all get in a big rocket, aim at it, and fire. We'll figure it out on the way there.

270 exoplanets have been discovered since the first one in 1995 A.D.

astronomy.com: A trio of super-Earths