Today's news that the Kepler spacecraft has turned up an alien solar system with five of its six known planets bunched tightly around their star had a familiar ring. In the past 15 years, astronomers have identified hundreds of solar systems, each bizarre in its own way. Yet this new system offers a unique way to learn more about how planets form and evolve.
"We keep hearing it over and over again: Other planetary systems aren't like our own," says exoplanet astronomer Debra Fischer of Yale University. But "this six-planet system is just incredible."
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