"around a single star outside of solar system".

By definition, if they are around a star, they are outside our solar system. Otherwise we'd just say they discovered 7 new planets (no need to mention our Sun, or 'star', etc.).

40 lightyears. So close yet so far away.

Blow them up before they discover us

Hmm, that's a lot of potential immigrants, better build a wall.
On the other hand, good deportation opportunities.

40 lightyears doesn't sound far, at the current fastest speed we've been able to reach, 25 miles/second, it would still take close to 300,000 years to send a probe. Those 40 years to send the data back are insignificant...

But do they have oil?

We'll be an interstellar, planet-colonizing species within 30 years if there's oil.

Fantastic news, time to start packing then :).

Is this an actual image of one of the planets???

Very interesting news (I love these topics)!

I'm not sure what the big deal with this press conference is.... I saw them hyping it up ... and then I watched the livestream.

Its 7 planets around a star probably just slightly bigger than a brown dwarf, that are tidally locked and if they had atmospheres would have INSANE weather systems (think convection on a global scale).

I think the news is interesting - but Fuck NASA for trying to hype up something like this.

Perhaps the future will be like 'Dark Star' where we go around blowing up planets with intelligent life that might compete with us to colonise our galaxy.