The majority of these planets are gas giants, a bit like Jupiter or Saturn in our own Solar System.

BBC: Trio of 'super-Earths' discovered

If Fomalhaut b bears similarities to Jupiter in our own Solar System, we muse, could that mean that Jupiter is not unique?

UNESCO: Open Access to Scientific Information

Small planets, like the inner four in our own solar system, are rocky - larger ones, like the outer four, aren't much more than balls of gas.

BBC: Viewpoint: The obsession with a 'twin Earth'

And we have more than 200 planets around other stars that we know about today, and also about what we may expect to discover in the future in our own solar system.

NPR: Astronomers Prepare to Fight Pluto Demotion

"We are starting to see a whole new type of planetary system, which is unlike anything in our own solar system, " said astronomer William Welsh at San Diego State University, who presented the Kepler findings Wednesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

WSJ: Galaxy Hosts 100 Billion Planets, in New Estimate

"We are starting to see a whole new type of planetary system, which is unlike anything in our own solar system, " said William Welsh, an astronomer at San Diego State University, who presented the Kepler findings Wednesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

WSJ: Galaxy Hosts 100 Billion Planets, in New Estimate

The stakes have just been raised a notch: Not only is there another planet right next door in our own solar system that had habitable environments on its surface long ago, but there appear to have been common and recognizable -- perhaps even Earthlike -- environments on Mars.

CNN: Have a drink on Mars