“Mother lode” of new planets just discoverd!
NASA ANNOUNCES 715 NEWLY-DISCOVERED PLANETS:
NASA announced yesterday (February 26th) that it had discovered 715 new planets outside our solar system using the Kepler telescope,
increasing the number discovered in our galaxy to about 1,700.
NASA planetary scientist Jack Lissauer called the 715 newly-known planets “the big mother lode.”
All the new planets are in systems like ours where multiple planets circle a star, and four of them orbit in so-called “habitable zones” where it is not too hot or too cold for liquid water, which is crucial for life to exist.
However, four are at least twice as big as Earth, making them more likely to be gas planets and therefore less likely to have life.
