【Watch Friends】

Way to steal NASA's thunder,Watch Friends video games.

The entire internet is still buzzing about the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets in a "nearby" star system -- it's only about 40 light-years, or 235 trillion miles, away. In galactic terms, that's pretty much right next door.

SEE ALSO: The sci-fi propulsion system that will get us to TRAPPIST-1 fastest

Unfortunately for NASA, Elite Dangerousgot there first.

The exploration-focused game -- which has often been described as "Grand Theft Autoin space" -- sets players loose in a recreation of our Milky Way galaxy. From the cockpit of their starships, players are free to mine, trade, do battle and find cool stuff as they please.

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For unobserved star systems -- which, until recently, included TRAPPIST-1 -- the game's "Stellar Forge" engine randomly generates celestial bodies using existing data and what we know about the physical realities of outer space as the basis.

As it happens, there's a star system in Elite Dangerousin roughly the same location as TRAPPIST-1. More than that, said system includes seven terrestrial worlds orbiting a Brown Dwarf, which is only a little bit smaller than the M8 star at the heart of the actual system.

It's not a perfect replica in the game. The Elite Dangerousstar system -- which is called "Core Sys Sector XU-P A5-0" -- includes a number of moons, as well as planets in paired co-orbits. Such determinations haven't yet been made about TRAPPIST-1.

David Braben, the CEO of Elitedeveloper Frontier Development, highlighted the in-game system's similarity to TRAPPIST-1 in a new forum post. He also noted that a forthcoming update will tweak the star system to account for NASA's discoveries and change its name to TRAPPIST-1.

You can read more about how Stellar Forge works in this 2015 interview with Braben at Space.com.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

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