EU cash, Belgian beer, and the final frontier

Belgian researcher leads most extraordinary space discovery in decades.

Who said EU enlargement was dead?

Grab a TRAPPIST-1 beer from the fridge, wash it down with a SPECULOOS biscuit, and gaze with wonder at the stars.

Thanks to an EU-funded Belgian astronomer, Michaël Gillon, we are closer than ever to knowing if we are alone or not in this universe.

While Wednesday’s press coverage of the discovery of seven potentially inhabitable nearby planets tended to focus on the use of a NASA telescope, in fact it was Gillon, a University of Liège researcher, who led the most extraordinary space discovery in decades.

Gillon and his team did it with the help of €1.96 million in EU funding.

Gillon told Playbook via a written statement “Without the EU funding it would not have been possible to arrive at this discovery. I’m grateful that the European Research Council invested in our idea.” 

The solar system in question has been labeled TRAPPIST-1 (after the monks who make beer) and the project that found it is called SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) after the Belgian sweet treat.

Belgian soft power never looked so good.

The European Commissioner in charge of funding Gillon, Carlos Moedas, is ecstatic.

Moedas told Playbook “this news shows the success and added value of having a European Program for Science.”

An alternative description of the discovery, circulated by the European Southern Observatory, is  “Ultracool Dwarf and the Seven Planets,” after the categorization of the TRAPPIST-1 solar system’s sun as a ‘dwarf star.’

Other names suggested online for future Belgian space discoveries include MUSSELS, FRITES, and WAFFLES.