Discover 18 new planets outside the Earth's solar system

science and technology

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), the University of Gugetten and the Sunberg Observatory have discovered 18 Earth-size planets outside the solar system.

According to the "phys" site, the researchers re-analyzed part of the data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope using a new and more sensitive method.

The team estimates that their new method has the ability to find more than 100 additional external planets in an important data set for the entire Kepler.

External planets

There are more than 4,000 planets orbiting the stars outside our solar system so far. Among these outer planets there are about 96% much larger than our planet, most of which are more comparable to Neptune or Jupiter.

This percentage may not reflect real conditions in space, because tracking small planets is much more difficult than tracking large planets, but small worlds are great targets in searching for Earth-like planets that can be habitable outside the solar system.

The 18 newly discovered worlds fall within the category of terrestrial planets, while some of them are much less than Earth, the smallest of which is only 69% of the Earth's size.

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