NASA confirms the existence of 5,000 worlds outside the solar system

In 1995, the first planet orbiting a star outside our solar system was discovered. And now, almost 30 years later, The number of confirmed exoplanets just crossed the 5,000 mark.

Account held NASA Exoplanet Archive, which records discoveries It is these bodies that appear in peer-reviewed scientific articles that have been confirmed by multiple detection methods or analytical techniques.

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“Planetary Odometer” has already exceeded 5000 Thanks to the latest batch of 65 exoplanets added to the archive a pot.

The The first planet discovered in a star similar to the Sun, in 1995, was 51 Pegasi bIt is located 50 light years from Earth. It is a gas giant with the mass of half Jupiter in orbit very close to its star, so its year is only four days long.

Those responsible for this discovery were Swiss Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, 2019 Nobel Prize winners in Physics For his contribution to understanding the evolution of the universe and the Earth’s place in the universe.

More than 5,000 planets have been found to date that include small rocky worlds like Earth.NASA recalls that gas giants are several times larger than Jupiter and “hot Jupiters” are in very close orbits around their stars.

There is also a so-called “Super-terrestrial planets”, which can be rocky worlds larger than our own, and “small Neptunes”as well as planets orbiting two stars simultaneously and other planets that continue to orbit around the remnants of dead, collapsing stars.

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“It’s not just a number,” says Jesse Christiansen, archive scientific director and researcher at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute, because “Each of them is a new world, a whole new planet” Nothing is known about her.