Scientists at NASA have announced the discovery of 1,284 other planets in the Milky Way galaxy. In addition, they stated, at least nine of those planets have characteristics similar to Earth’s. The sightings were seen as NASA scientists were going through some latest images and data from the Kepler telescope. The Kepler space telescope has added these to its already impressive total of having spotted 2, 325 planets in the galaxy thus far.
The Earth like planets are in what scientist are calling a “temperate zone” that will allow for the formation of water and for possible life as these planets orbit their stars at roughly the same distance that Earth is from its own star. For the most recent discoveries, scientists pointed the telescope at a huge swath of space that contained roughly 150,000 stars. Then, it looked for a pushing away of the star light. This indicated to scientists that a planet was passing by the star. The discoveries have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.
This method is a relatively new method being used to discover planets. Scientist believe it to be highly reliable and much quicker than many of the older methods for discovering planets. Lead author of the report, Timothy Morton of Princeton, said that, “One of the biggest challenges for Kepler is that these follow up observations that have been traditionally used to verify planets, are time and resource intensive.
Morton is the inventor of an algorithm that was specifically designed to counter the challenges of identifying the planets with reliability. His method has allowed for a 99% authentication of any sighted possible planet. With this method, the NASA scientists have been able to make certain confirmation of 984 planets that had already been discovered using various other means and methods.
Until Morton developed his method, the Kepler would just wander around sending back data and images and the scientists back at NASA were well prepared to ignore up to 80% of the information sent back. Through Morton’s method, the scientists were able to apply his formula to a group of over four thousand possible planets. When they did this, they discovered the 1,284 that they have reported in their recent research.
PHOTO CREDIT: NASA