NASA's Kepler space telescope has uncovered six new planets huddled around a sunlike star--odd worlds that astronomers have dubbed mini-Neptunes. Five of the new planets are closer to their parent star than Mercury is to the sun. The sixth world lies farther out, within a region that would fit inside the orbit of Venus. "This is the most closely packed known planetary system," said study co-author Jonathan Fortney, an astronomer with the University of California, Santa Cruz. These groundbreaking findings hold enormous potential for understanding the greater patterns of our own infinite existence.
