SPACE: Scientists discover 7 ‘Earthlike’ planets orbiting a nearby star. “The newly discovered solar system resembles a scaled-down version of our own. The star at its center, an ultracool dwarf called TRAPPIST-1, is less than a tenth the size of the sun and about a quarter as warm. Its planets circle tightly around it; the closest takes just a day and a half to complete an orbit, the most distant takes about 20 days. If these planets orbited a larger, brighter star they’d be fried to a crisp. But TRAPPIST-1 is so cool that all seven of the bodies are bathed in just the right amount of warmth to hold liquid water. And three of them receive the same amount of heat as Venus, Earth and Mars, putting them in ‘the habitable zone,’ that Goldilocks region where it’s thought life can thrive. Still, ‘Earthlike’ is a generous term to describe these worlds.” Well, to be fair, it’s a generous term for parts of New Jersey.