This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

David Livingston is here. Dr. Space himself, my colleague and co-host and co-pilot, this is Hotel Mars.

And we're headed 40 light years out, thanks to Julian

Duitt at MIT, and Benjamin Rakham at MIT. These two men are astronomers, and they're going

to take us to an ultra-cooled dwarf, a subset of red dwarfs, which is the most popular star in the solar system.

If you're asking, we've got a yellow dwarf. We're very lucky. But we're going to the exoplanets

of an ultra-cooled dwarf named Trappist I, as in the religious order, Trappist one, 40 light years out.

Julian, I begin with you because our conversation is wonderful and you're very generous,

you and Benjamin, to come on and talk about the matters that you've been working on for many

years. What is an ultra-cool dwarf, Julian?

How should we think of it?

Why does it have all these planets seven so far around it?

Good evening to you.

Good evening.

It seems to me that the best way to start thinking about how this one

is the ultra-cooled dwarf store is actually not to turn to our own sun,

but to turn to Jupiter and its systems of moons.

And look at how close they are to Jupiter and appreciate the fact that something as

smaller as Jupiter has managed to form planet.

And then think of increasing a tiny bit the mass of Jupiter, just enough so that it could

kickstart fusion and be a star per that classification.

And you would basically be looking at a star like Trapis 1.

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