NASA: ‘More than 5,000 exoplanets have been discovered by humans’

<사진=NASA/JPL-Caltech>

The number of exoplanets confirmed by humans has exceeded 5,000. It has been 30 years since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1992.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced on the 21st (local time) that it has identified 65 new planets outside the solar system through the space telescope and added them to the ‘Nasa Exoplanet Archive’. This brings the number of exoplanets discovered so far to 5005.

The planets NASA has discovered range from small, rocky planets like Earth to gigantic gas planets several times larger than Jupiter.

<발견된 외계행성 중 35%는 해왕성 같은 얼음 행성, 31%는 지구보다 큰 암석 행성, 30%는 토성이나 목성 같은 거대한 가스 행성이다. 사진=NASA/JPL-Caltech>

“This is not just a number,” said Jesse Christianson, director of the Exoplanet Archives in a statement. Each of these is a new world, a whole new planet.”

NASA explained that there could be hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy alone. “Of the 5,000 exoplanets, 4,900 are within a few thousand light years of Earth,” said Christianson. There will be,” he said.

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The first exoplanets were identified in the early 1990s. After NASA launched the Kepler Space Telescope in 2009, the discovery of exoplanets accelerated.

The Kepler Space Telescope retired in 2018 after discovering more than 2,700 exoplanets in nine years. NASA launched the TESS telescope to take over his mission that year, continuing his exploration of extrasolar planets.

The performance of the James Webb Space Telescope, which arrived at Lagrange 2 (L2) earlier this year, is also expected. The Webb Telescope, the largest and most powerful space telescope in human history, is expected to be able to detect planets outside the Milky Way by capturing infrared rays arriving through clouds of gas.

Reporter Min-ha Yang ([e-mail]), Electronic Newspaper Internet