NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program announced yesterday the discovery of new exoplanets that have brought a known total of over 4,500.
Specifically, according to a Newsweek report, 40 new exoplanets have been found, and the vast majority of them were discovered through the Kepler space telescope, which retired in 2018.
In a Twitter post, NASA Exoplanets said, astronomers are still discovering worlds in the old measurements of Kepler.
As of this writing, the space agency was able to list about 7,721 planetary candidates that could be exoplanets, although NASA is still waiting for verification before it gets added to the total number.
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Recent Exoplanet Additions
Among the latest additions to NASA's exoplanet database is TOI-251 b, a planet with a mass of Jupiter located 325 light-years away. It takes only 4.9 days to complete a single orbit of its star.
Another addition is TOI-178 b, an exoplanet falling under the "super-Earth" classification, with a mass of roughly 1.5 times that of the Earth. It takes less than two days to orbit its stars.
An exoplanet, as defined in this report, is any planet existing outside its own solar system. Through various detection mechanisms, scientists can determine the size of these planets, their mass, and even their composition.
The discovery of exoplanets is a comparatively new branch of astronomy. The first ones were identified in the 1990s, and since then, the figure has risen dramatically.
Researchers need to depend on telescope observations since exoplanets are too far away to visit with the present technology. Even Proxima Centauri b, the closest known exoplanet, is four light-years away.
Discovering New Worlds
If an individual were to get into his car and drive headed for the planet at 60 miles an hour, it would take them 47 million years to reach that destination.
NASA said that even the Voyager probes, which fly out beyond the solar system at tens of thousands of miles an hour, would take roughly 75,000 years to approach the destination.
Scientists discover exoplanets using different kinds of approaches. Many are detected through the use of the transit method, in which researchers are looking at a distant star and measuring how much it dims when an exoplanet is passing in front of it.
Of specific interest are exoplanets present within the livable or inhabitable area of their stars, an area that's not extremely hot and not extremely cold for liquid water to exist on their surface.
Such planets could be livable and perform a vital role in the present quest for life elsewhere within the universe.
Some of the exoplanets like K2-18b, which is found roughly 124 light-years away, have been known as more possible to be habitable compared to others.
Kepler Retirement
In 2018, NASA reported, after it spent nine years in deep space and revealing that the galaxy has more planets compared to stars, its Kepler space telescope had run out of fuel required for the fulfillment of science operations.
The space agency decided to retire Kepler within its current, safe orbit, away from this planet. The space telescope leaves a legacy of over 2,600 discoveries of planets from beyond the solar system, many of which could be potentially habitable places.
Related information about the discovery of new exoplanets is shown on WC Daily's YouTube video below:
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