NASA has said that these exoplanets range from small and rocky worlds like Earth to ‘Super Earths’, which are larger than the planets of our solar system. There are also planets larger than Jupiter and ‘mini-Neptunes’. Some planets revolve around two stars at once, while many planets revolve around the remnants of dead stars.
Jesse Christiansen, a research scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, said that it is not just a number. Each of those planets is a new world. The scientist said that he gets excited about every planet, because nothing is known about them yet.
There are likely to be hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy. In the beginning we were only able to detect the planets that circled our Sun. In 1992, scientists started detecting planets with the help of observatories. For the first time, a neutron star was known, which was known as a pulsar. Studying the sound coming from the pulsar, scientists found planets in orbit around it.
The paper’s lead author, Alexander Volsjon, confirmed the existence of new planets outside our solar system 30 years ago. Then he said that if planets could be found around neutron stars then planets should be everywhere.
Now scientists hope that new telescopes like the James Webb and the sensitive instruments set up in them will help accelerate exoplanet research. Many more telescopes are also expected to be launched in the next few years. Among them, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope can be launched in 2027. Apart from this, the European Space Agency’s ARIEL mission is set to be launched in the year 2029.
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