NASA JPL found more than 5,000 exoplanets on Monday, marking a cosmic milestone. The arrival of a fresh batch of 65 planets outside our solar system to the NASA Exoplanet Archive has sparked jubilation.
"It's not just a number," Exoplanet Archive science lead Jessie Christiansen said in a statement. He added: "Each one of them is a new world, a brand new planet. I get excited about everyone because we don't know anything about them."
The first verified exoplanets were discovered in the early 1990s, indicating that scientists set a blistering pace for discovery.
In June 2019, NASA revealed that the planet count had reached 4,000, and it took less than three years to add another thousand to the total.
NASA Exoplanet Archive Records 5000+ Planets
JPL claims that its exoplanet archive comprises planets of all forms, sizes, and sorts.
The 5000+ planets they've discovered, NASA said, vary from tiny, rocky worlds similar to Earth to super-massive gas giants considerably larger than Jupiter and so-called "Super-Earths" with significantly more mass than our own planet.
A total of 65 additional verified exoplanets have been added to the list, including discoveries previously published in peer-reviewed journals.
The planets have been verified as real by numerous detection techniques, indicating that they circle stars outside our Solar System.
But, while this news is impressive in and of itself, it doesn't end there.
According to Space.com, since the James Webb telescope is now up and running near the L2 Lagrange Point, astronomers may expect many more exoplanet discoveries (and considerably more thorough studies of them) in the future years from the new $10 billion telescope.
About Exoplanets
Exoplanet diversity represents populations of planets that are unlike anything found in our solar system, CNN said.
They include super-Earths, rocky worlds larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, and scorching hot Jupiters, which dwarfs the solar system's greatest planet and closely orbit their home stars.
Planets orbiting several stars have also been discovered, as well as planets orbiting the leftovers of dead stars known as white dwarfs.
So far, gas giants account for 30 percent of verified exoplanets, super-Earths for 31 percent, and Neptune-like planets for 35 percent.
Terrestrial planets, such as Earth and Mars, account for only four percent of the total.
Planet-hunting telescopes and satellites like the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Kepler Space Telescope, and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite have previously discovered exoplanets.
About two-thirds of the 5,000 verified planets were discovered thanks to Kepler.
Many of the new 65 planets are super-Earth and sub-Neptune worlds, with a few hot Jupiter-size planets thrown in.
There are two Earth-size planets, but their temperatures are around 620 degrees Fahrenheit (327 degrees Celsius), making them more akin to "hot rocks" than livable planets.
She also mentioned a system with five planets surrounding a tiny, chilly red dwarf star, comparable to the TRAPPIST-1 system, with seven rocky planets orbiting a similar star.
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