TRAPPIST-1 and the Mysterious Pea Pod Planets

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NASA/JPL-Caltech's illustration: TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, orbits of known planets in 2016 and then in 2017.

There may have been times when one generation's world was much like another's.

This is not one of those times.

Science textbooks of my youth included speculation that Earth's mountains exist because our planet has been cooling and shrinking. One of my geology professors didn't "believe in" continental drift, and that's another topic.

Back then, we knew that planets orbit our star, but weren't sure how the star we call the Sun and the Solar System formed.

We still don't, for that matter. Not for sure. But the nebular hypothesis, or something very much like it, is a pretty good fit with observations.

I'll get back to that, and some of what we've been learning about planetary systems: including TRAPPIST-1 and its seven worlds.

More at A Catholic Citizen in America.

(New planetary system pattern discovered. TRAPPIST-1 worlds. Solar System formation and evolution ideas, from Descartes to pulsar planets. Psalms 115:3.)

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