There's a cute Google Doodle to mark Nasa's discovery of the Earth-like Trappist-1 planets

The discovery of seven earth-size planets has inspired Google to mark the momentous occasion with its latest Doodle.

This new solar system has raised the possibility of life as scientists say that the planets exist in a so-called habitable zone, not too close and yet nor too far away from the dwarf star Trappist-1 that it orbits.

Initially Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope found three planets but then an additional four planets were discovered and are said to be rocky and roughly the size of Earth.

Scientists say that assuming the atmospheric conditions are right, all seven of these planets which are 235 trillion miles away, could have water.

Study author Michael Gillon said that this was the first time so many planets of this kind have been found around the same star and were like the moons around Jupiter.

"The star is so small and cold that the seven planets are temperate, which means they could have some liquid water hosting life on the surface," he said.

There won't be any missions to the planets any time soon, as they are 40 light years away, and with current technology, would takes hundreds of thousands of years to reach.

But getting into the spirit of saying hello to our new neighbours, the Doodle's animation shows an Earth-like character with a telescope spying into deep space and finding the newly discovered planets all in a crowd.