Planet bonanza: NASA announces discovery of 715 new worlds

March 3, 2014

The NASA’s Kepler mission announced the discovery of 715 new planets. These newly-verified planets orbit 305 stars, revealed multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system. This discovery marks a significant increase in the number of known small-sized planets more akin to Earth than previously identified exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.
About the discovery of 715 new planets

Technique used by scientists: Verification by multiplicity that relies in part on the logic of probability.
Used the planet-hunting Kepler telescope. It observed 150,000 stars and has found a few thousand of those to have planet candidates.
Nearly 95% of these planets are smaller than Neptune that is almost four times the size of Earth.

Four of the new planets are less than 2.5 times the radius of Earth, and they orbit their host suns in the “habitable zone” – the region around a star where water can keep a liquid state. In other words, it is defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.
One of these new habitable zone planets known as Kepler-296f – orbits a star half the size and 5% as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth, but scientists do not know whether the planet is a gaseous world, with a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, or it is a water world surrounded by a deep ocean.
This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1700.

Key terms:

Exoplanet (or extrasolar planet): A planet outside the Solar System.
Habitable zone: The region around a star where water can keep a liquid state

Kepler space telescope mission

Launched in 2009, with the sole purpose of finding new stars and planets. In other words, the Kepler space telescope sought to find Earth-like worlds orbiting distant stars in the Constellation Lyra.
Orbits around the Sun, 40 million miles from Earth.
Named after 17th Century astronomer Mr. Johannes Kepler.

Outcome of the discovery: The study indicates that the planets in these multi-systems are small and their orbits are flat and circular, resembles pancakes, not our classical view of an atom.

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