A solar system similar to ours has been recently discovered. Epsilon Eridani is located at about 10.5 light-years from our sun and it’s surrounded by two asteroid belts that are shaped by planets. The announcement was made today by astronomers at SETI Institute and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. After a first good impression, astronomers think that the solar system might harbor Earth-like planets, and that’s because the system looks a lot like ours did when life first appeared on Earth. Back then, we had an asteroid belt too, beyond Neptune, called the Kuiper Belt. Over time, many of the objects in it fell into the inner solar system in the period called Late Heavy Bombardment. One of those objects might have collided with Earth, expelling a huge amount of material into space and creating the moon as we know it.

It’s interesting to see if Epsilon Eridani has a planet similar to Earth and to study how universal the processes in a solar system are.  Earth is just far enough from the sun, avoiding to be fried but close enough to support life and have its own atmosphere. Astronomers think that there’s a planet in Epsilon Eridani that might have these properties. Even if it’s a lot younger than our solar system, it will most probably evolve similarly. For now, Epsilon Eridani is surrounded by two asteroid belts that scientists believe are held in formation by large planets. Nevertheless, in order to determine if there’s a habitable planet in the system that we can live on, we’ll have to design more sensitive instruments, like the next-generation of planet-hunting telescopes.