NASA confirms that there are more than 5,000 worlds outside our solar system

The diversity of exoplanets represents groups of planets unlike anything found in our solar system. They include rocky worlds larger than Earth called super-Earths, tiny Neptunes that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, and scorching hot Jupiters that dwarf the largest planet in our solar system and orbit closely around their host stars.

Scientists have also found planets orbiting more than one star and even some around the remains of dead stars called white dwarfs.

To date, of the confirmed exoplanets, 30% are gas giants, 31% are super-Earths, and 35% are Neptune-like. Only 4% of planets are terrestrial or rocky like Earth or Mars.

When Christiansen was a graduate student in the early 2000s, there were only about 100 known exoplanets.

Christiansen said Kepler has helped scientists discover about two-thirds of the 5,000 confirmed planets.

In the new batch of 65 planets, many are deep Earth- and Neptune-like planets, along with some hot Jupiter-sized planets. There are also two Earth-sized planets, Christiansen said, but they are about 620 degrees Fahrenheit (327 degrees Celsius), so they are more like “hot rocks” than habitable planets.

She also noted that one is a system with five planets orbiting a small, cool red dwarf star — not unlike the TRAPPIST-1 system, where a similar star hosts seven rocky planets.

Space observatories join the hunt

The Webb Telescope is preparing to study the TRAPPIST system in detail.

Although scientists have confirmed the existence of more than 5,000 exoplanets, there are likely hundreds of billions of them throughout the Milky Way.

“Of the 5,000 known exoplanets, 4,900 are within a few thousand light years of us,” Christiansen said. And think about the fact that we are 30,000 light-years away from the galactic center; If you extrapolate from the tiny bubble around us, that means there are many more planets in our galaxy that we haven’t found yet, up to 100 to 200 billion. It’s amazing.”