Nine out of the newly found planets may be potentially habitable, scientists say
Washington: In the largest finding of planets to date, NASA has announced the discovery of 1,284 new planets outside our solar system, more than doubling the number of exoplanets found by the Kepler space telescope.
Nine of the newly found planets may be potentially habitable, NASA said.
“This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” said Stofan.
Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope’s July 2015 planet candidate catalogue, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 per cent — the minimum required to earn the status of “planet”.
An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 per cent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena.
“Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy,” said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA.
