Rocketship X-Geek

The universe is looking more crowded all the time. As astronomers' ability to look closer at further distances improves, the number of our planetary cousins grows.

European astronomers have found a trio of "super-Earths" closely circling a star that astronomers once figured had nothing orbiting it.

The discovery demonstrates that planets keep popping up in unexpected places around the universe.

The announcement is the first time three planets close to Earth's size were found orbiting a single star, said Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz.

While these new planets are too hot to support life, they do serve to re-emphasize the point that there are a heckuva lot more planets out there than we used to think. In fact, the team found planets only a little bigger than Earth around a full one-third of stars previously thought to have no planets. And, as I have said before, the more planets, the better the chance of life on one or more of them.