Until some of the major scientific discoveries were made, people believed all kind of things about our solar system, about the Earth and, not so far away in the past, some of them even pretended that there was no other Universe other than our own tiny solar system. However, about half a century ago, Sputnik was launched and a new era of discoveries started. All those egocentric myths began to disappear one by one. We have been shown that there are billions and billions of stars and planets out there and that the Universe has practically no end.

Until now there nevertheless has been something that made Earth unique and it hasn’t been the fact that there is life here. The whole solar system had been considered unique by scientists but a recent discovery made public yesterday by researchers shows that there is in fact a solar system similar to ours about 41 light years from Earth.

55 Cancri represents this solar system’s sun; it has both the size and age of our Sun and there are at least five planets orbiting it. The fifth planet of this solar system circles 55 Cancri at the distance of Venus in our solar system in the habitable zone where it is warm enough for liquid water. However, this fifth planet has 45 times the mass of Earth, so it could be compared to Saturn or Neptune than to Earth, from this standpoint.

Scientists are quite amazed by this discovery, as till now the solar systems they’ve discovered seems to contain a lot more planets than five or eight, as our solar system does. The leader of the team reporting this discovery, Professor Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University, said about 55 Cancri: “It’s a system that appears to be packed with planets.”

The discovery is very important because this solar system looks much like home. It proves that our solar system is not as unique as we believed before, but at least there is hope for us to find another home if something goes wrong with Earth.