Gaudi et al. have discovered a solar system with a sun, half as massive as our own. They found it in a region with more metals (atoms with masses of three and more than that of Hydrogen) than here where we live. According to Guillermo González, that can be a bad thing for life, because there may be more comets, and more big planets destabilizing little ones. In a system like that, Earth's orbit could get destabilized.
In any case all the "planet builders"(like Alan Boss) on Earth must be getting very excited.
One can read in the New York Times article above:
"Alan Boss, a theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said, “The fact that these are hard to detect by microlensing means there must be a good number of them — solar system analogues are not rare.”
Notwithstanding this expert opinion, one should remember González's caution.
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