NASA confirms a 'celestial milestone', 5000 exoplanets confirmed so far

The number of confirmed exoplanets just surpassed 5,000, marking the culmination of a 30-year journey. In a milestone celebration, NASA announced that its space telescopes helped confirm thousands of new exoplanets.

In the not-so-distant past, there were only a few known planets. However, a flurry of recent discoveries has marked a scientific high point: more than 5,000 planets are now confirmed to exist beyond our solar system.

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In March, the NASA Exoplanet Archive added 65 new exoplanets - planets outside our solar system - to the planetary odometer. The archive contains exoplanet discoveries that appeared in peer-reviewed scientific papers and have been confirmed through multiple detection methods or analytical methods.

Planets found to date range from small, rocky worlds like Earth to gas giants much larger than Jupiter and “hot Jupiters” that orbit in scorchingly close orbits around their stars. Additionally, there are "super-Earths," giant rocky worlds that might be larger than our own. As well as "mini-Neptunes" which are smaller versions of our solar system's Neptune.

^{(Illustration Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech)}

As far as we know, our galaxy likely contains hundreds of billions of such planets.

Jessie Christiansen, science lead for the archive and a research scientist at Caltech's NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, explained that it is more than just a number.

“Each one of them is a new world, a brand-new planet. I get excited about every one because we don’t know anything about them.”

Alexander Wolszczan, a professor at Penn State who searches for exoplanets, believes we are entering a period of discovery that will go beyond simply adding new planets to the list.

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“To my thinking, it is inevitable that we’ll find some kind of life somewhere – most likely of some primitive kind,” Wolszczan said.

He pointed out the close relationship between the chemistry of life on Earth and chemistry found in the universe, together with widespread organic molecules, makes the discovery of the existence of life elsewhere only a matter of time.

(With inputs from agencies)