Science/Tech

Kepler Team Finds 715 New Exoplanets

By Kamal Nayan | Update Date: Feb 28, 2014 09:16 AM EST

In a quest to find another watery planet with life, NASA's Kepler team has identified 715 new planets that are orbiting stars beyond solar system. 

According to scientists, four of the newly discovered planets carry hope of supporting life as they lie within the habitable 'Goldilocks' zone of their own suns. In this zone, planets orbit at a distance that is neither too hot nor too cold for water to exist in the liquid form. 

These discoveries also hint towards a notion that Milky Way which is one of the many billions existing, is teeming with planets which are similar to our own.

"We almost doubled just today the number of planets known to humanity," said planetary scientist Jack Lissauer of NASA's Ames Research Centre in Moffett Field, California, who led the study of the Kepler data, according to Independent.ie. "We've now developed a process to verify multiple planet candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a veritable bonanza of new worlds."

"These results are based on the first two years of Kepler observations and with each additional year, we'll be able to bring in a few hundred more."

The four planets that carry the hope of being a habitable one are less than 2.5 times the size of the Earth and orbit at the apt distance from their respective suns allowing water to exist in the liquid form. However, it is going to take a while before scientists discover evidences of existence of water, let alone life. 

The Kepler telescope before going crippled gathered vast amount of data for scientists to analyze. 

These new exoplanets have been discovered by analysis the light patterns of 305 stars. This means that these existed in multi-planet solar systems identical to our own. 

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