The US space agency has just announced the discovery of the new “exoplanets” which are considered as similar to Earth due to their distance from the star they orbit. Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey, said: “We have discovered 1,284 new planets – the most explanets ever announced at one time.” It more than doubles the previous amount of exoplanets found by the Kepler Telescope, taking the total number to 2,325.

It comes after NASA said they now also believe every star in space has at least one planet orbiting it, further increasing the chance of life evolving somewhere.  Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said: “The Kepler specialist telescope is the first capable of detecting call rocky planets in the habitable zone of their parent star. “When launched we did not know if exoplanets or rocky exoplanets were rare and we now know they are extremely common and most stars have at least one planet orbiting. READ MORE


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