A Six-Planet Solar System in Perfect Synchrony Has Been Found in the Milky Way

Astronomers have discovered a rare in-sync solar system with six planets moving like a grand cosmic orchestra, untouched by outside forces since their birth billions of years ago.

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The find can help explain how solar systems across the Milky Way galaxy came to be. This one is 100 light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.

A pair of planet-hunting satellites — NASA’s Tess and the European Space Agency’s Cheops — teamed up for the observations.

None of the planets in perfect synchrony are within the star’s so-called habitable zone, which means little if any likelihood of life, at least as we know it.

“Here we have a golden target” for comparison, said Adrien Leleu of the University of Geneva, who was part of an international team that published the results in the journal Nature.