NASA Discovers 4 Earth- Like Planets That Can Support Life

The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) has announced the
discovery of 715 new planets, increasing
our knowledge of heavenly bodies by
almost 70%.
Before this mankind's database had only
known about 1000 planets, and in the
newly discovered planet, there is about
four planet located in where NASA
believes can support life.
The new discoveries where made possible
by a new telescope called kepler space
telescope and were verified using a new
technique that scientists expect to make
new planetary discoveries more frequent
and more detailed.
Planetary scientist at NASA, Jack Lissauer
said: We've been able to open the
bottleneck to access the mother lode and
deliver to you more than 20 times as
many planets as has ever been found and
announced at once,".
The Kepler space observatory was
launched into space in 2009 and is able to
locate what NASA defines as habitable
zone. Habitable zones are zones that are
the right distance from a star for a
moderate temperature that might sustain
liquid water.
NASA's astrophysics Douglas Hudgins
said: "Kepler has really been a game-
changer for our understanding of the
incredible diversity of planets and
planetary systems in our galaxy, The new
technique is called "verification by
multiplicity," and relies in part on the
logic of probability. Instead of searching
blindly, the team focused on stars that
the technique suggests are likely to have
more than one planet in their orbit.
NASA says 95% of the planets discovered
by Kepler are smaller than Neptune,
which is four times as big as Earth. One of
them is about twice the size of Earth and
orbits a star half the size of Earth's sun in
a 30-day cycle. The other three planets in
habitable zones also are all roughly twice
the size of Earth.