NASA Discovers a New Solar System with Seven Planets, Confirming Giordano Bruno's Earlier Claims
They are within what astronomers consider the habitable zone, the region around a star where luminosity and radiation flow would allow the presence of life.
NASA announced this Wednesday a new discovery regarding exoplanets, planets that orbit a star different from the Sun and, therefore, do not belong to the Solar System.
The NASA finding sets a record for the number of planets and the number of potential Earth-like candidates around a single star.
The possibility of finding other planets like Earth is something that the great astronomer Giordano Bruno asserted more than 4 centuries ago. In 1584, Giordano Bruno wrote "On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds." In this work, he spoke of the Universe as an infinite space filled with worlds like ours. These statements earned him his condemnation to the stake.
Giordano Bruno said: "There are countless suns; countless Earths revolve around those suns in a similar way to how planets revolve around our Sun."
What Giordano Bruno said over 400 years ago is now confirmed by NASA through modern Astronomy.
Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, commented on the new discovery by stating that it "gives us a hint that the issue is not whether we will find a second Earth, but when."
