Three new planets might support life

Did you know that there's a whole universe out there where other life may exist? Astronomers say there is a  likelihood and recently announced that they've identified a star system with up to seven planets -- three of which could potentially host life -- about 22 light-years away.
The likelihood that conditions could support life on at least one of those planets is "tremendous" according to one scientist, given that there are three terrestrial-mass planets in the habitable zone of one system. The "habitable zone" is the area near a star in which a planet can theoretically hold liquid water. In our own solar system, Venus is close to the inner edge of potential habitability, while Mars is closer to the outer edge. The findings, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, are the latest in a recent string of identifications of planets that may host life.
What are these planets like?
The three planets orbit a star called Gliese 667C, part of the triple-star system Gliese 667. They are between four and eight times the mass of the Earth, making them "super-Earths." If you were standing on any of the potentially habitable planets in this system, that sun would appear as a bright red star. The other two stars in the system "would look like a very bright pair of stars providing as much illumination as the full moon on Earth," said Guillem Anglada-Escude of the University of Gottingen, Germany, who led the team of astronomers.
The planets are likely either rocky or water worlds, meaning they're entirely covered in water. These particular planets also appear to be "tidally locked," meaning the same side of a planet is always facing a star. That means one side of the planet always gets light and the other hemisphere is always in darkness.
And with three terrestrial-mass planets in the habitable zone, the likelihood of one of them actually being habitable is tremendous. The system also likely consists of two hot planets further in and two cooler planets orbiting further out, although scientists are less certain that the seventh planet exists.
Scientists determined these characteristics of the star system using new observations gathered from the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Magellan Telescope, with existing data from the European Southern Observatory's HARPS instrument in Chile. Earlier, scientists had determined that the star Gliese 667C had three planets with one that could be a candidate for life.

Read more about the findings from here.