"Potentially Habitable" Alien Planets Discovered

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- There's no place like home or is there?

Researchers now say they have found three "earth-like worlds" orbiting an ultracool dwarf star 40 light-years away in another star system, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

The dwarf star, known as TRAPPIST-1 is too dim to be seen with the naked eye or even amateur telescopes from Earth.

The exoplanets are about the size of Earth and given the proximity of two of them to the dwarf star, they receive about four times the amount of radiation than we do from the sun, which suggests they are in the "habitable zone."  The "habitable zone" determines how close a planet is to the star that it orbits and given the temperature of the planet based on that proximity, it could have water on the surface. Less is known about the third outer planet, which receives twice the amount of radiation that Earth does, but it is potentially in the habitable zone as well.

Researchers will study these 'worlds' for years to come and are already working on observations to see if the planets have water or methane molecules. Sending an expedition team to study the planets, however, is out of the question.  With current technology, it would take millions of years to reach these planets.

The telescopes these researchers use to study the planets are even more precise than Hubble.