Before this mankind's database had only known about 1000 planets, and in the newly discovered planet, there is about four planet located in where NASA believes can support life.
The new discoveries where made possible by a new telescope called kepler space telescope and were verified using a new technique that scientists expect to make new planetary discoveries more frequent and more detailed.
Planetary scientist at NASA, Jack Lissauer said:We've been able to open the bottleneck to access the mother lode and deliver to you more than 20 times as many planets as has ever been found and announced at once,".
The Kepler space observatory was launched into space in 2009 and is able to locate what NASA defines as habitable zone. Habitable zones are zones that are the right distance from a star for a moderate temperature that might sustain liquid water.
NASA's astrophysics Douglas Hudgins said:"Kepler has really been a game-changer for our understanding of the incredible diversity of planets and planetary systems in our galaxy,The new technique is called "verification by multiplicity," and relies in part on the logic of probability. Instead of searching blindly, the team focused on stars that the technique suggests are likely to have more than one planet in their orbit.
NASA says 95% of the planets discovered by Kepler are smaller than Neptune, which is four times as big as Earth. One of them is about twice the size of Earth and orbits a star half the size of Earth's sun in a 30-day cycle. The other three planets in habitable zones also are all roughly twice the size of Earth
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