Seven-Planet System Detected (opens in new tab)

It's bizarrely worded, yes. I think what they're trying to say is it's a planetary system very similar to the Solar system. Announcing it as a new "planetary system" would sound much less dramatic, since we've cataloged more than 700 of those.

Yes, 'Solar' refers to our sun, Sol. So there is only one 'Solar' system which is our own.

I think 'star system' is acceptable as well.

I usually hear them referred to as stellar systems. But like my sibling comment said, they are trying to say this stellar system is a second "solar system" due to its similarities.

Interestingly in Norwegian and Swedish "solsystem" can mean any planetary system, but if you say "solsystemet" i.e. "_the_ Solar system" you typically refer to our own. http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solsystem

In this particular case, the title makes sense. According to them, the newly found planetary system is very similar to our solar system. Hence the title "Second Solar System detected".

Many say "moon" when they mean natural sattelitte of a planet

This is entirely dependent on the luminosity of the star. The intensity of the light diminishes according to an inverse-square rule and is dependent on the star's temperature and diameter.

Not necessarily, if the star is smaller and cooler than ours.

Moons orbiting the outermost gas giant could support earth like life.

Emphasis on "as we know it". With the wild diversity of living conditions we have found just here on Earth, I hope that we find an equally diverse array of life Out There, spanning a wide variety of conditions that we considered too hostile.

Seven planets, and it fits into one Earth orbit?

Hey, it's Kerbin!

Yeah, unreachable without FTL travel.

just three years at warp 9 =)

I think you found my new favorite website.

Some of the closest habitable neighbour stars.

tau Ceti: http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/system.html?id=tau%20C...

Gliese 876: http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/system.html?id=Gliese%...

HD 62509: http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/system.html?id=HD%2062...

Gliese 581: http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/system.html?id=Gliese%...

This is an interesting example, useless at first glance but you know there are a lot of smaller planets closer to the star. http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/system.html?id=HR%2087...

Agreed! What I found most interesting about this article is that our own solar system seems fairly unique (I know, small sample size). Kepler 62 is the only one that has an Earth-like planet at about the same distance from the central star, and even in that case that particular planet is the outermost one in that system. I guess I always assumed that due to various physical laws that other star systems would be pretty similar to ours in regards to planet-types (hot-rocks vs middle-ground vs gas-giants vs coldies) at various orbits, but there seems to be much more at play here (star size, etc, etc). Truly fascinating.

We probably wouldn't even if there was a copy of Earth there.

it eventually loads in Firefox 17 but it is yellow for a fraction of a second (probably javascript that is slow to load?)