More than 1,000 new exoplanets discovered – but still no Earth twin
Thursday, May 12, 2016 - 07:41
in Astronomy & Space
NASA astronomers working with data from the Kepler space observatory have presented the largest single crop of newly discovered exoplanets to date. It's impressive – 1,284 new planets have been announced, including around 550 which are of comparable size to the Earth. However just nine of these may be in their stars' habitable zones – where it is plausible that liquid water could exist on the surface of a planet.