EXISTENCE OF ANOTHER SOLAR SYSTEM?

The discovery of a Jupiter-like planet and another about the size of Saturn has astronomers suggesting that solar systems like our own may be common.
The newfound worlds both appear to be gaseous and are about 80 percent the sizes of Jupiter and Saturn, the astronomers said today. They orbit a star that is about half the size of our sun and is dimmer and much cooler.
"This is the first discovery of a multi-planet system that could be analogous to our solar system," said research team member Alison Crocker.

Several similarities:
The newfound solar system, about 5,000 light-years away, is more compact than our own. The larger planet's orbit is 2.3 times as far from its host star as the Earth is from the sun. Jupiter is 5.2 times farther from the sun than Earth.
But there are several interesting similarities:
— The ratio between the masses of the two worlds is about 3:1, similar to the Jupiter/Saturn ratio.
— The smaller planet is about twice as far from its star as the larger one, just as Saturn is roughly twice as far away from the sun as Jupiter.
— The two worlds orbit their star in 5 and 14 years, similar to the 2:5 orbit ratio of Jupiter and Saturn.
The planets were found using a technique called GRAVITATIONAL LENSING, in which light from the faraway planets is bent and magnified by the gravity of a foreground object, in this case another star. The technique has been used to find three other Jupiter-mass planets, each around different stars, in the past.