- NASA has confirmed that more than 5,000 planets exist outside our solar system.
- NASA says these are just known ones and actual number could be in billions.
- Most planets are gaseous in nature.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently confirmed that more than 5,000 known planets exist outside our solar system, the Daily Mail reported.
These planets are called exoplanets. Currently, the NASA Exoplanet Archive has a total of 5,005 planets.
There are a variety of exoplanets, including worlds like Earth and some gas giants like Jupiter.
NASA emphasised that 5,005 was a small number and that the actual number could be hundreds of billions. According to NASA’s database, most of the planets are gaseous, like Neptune.
One of the confirmed exoplanets is the ‘super Earth’ which has a mass of 3.51 Earths.
There are various methods to detect and identify exoplanets. One is called the Doppler method, which measures the vibration of stars due to the gravitational pull of other planets.
Another method is the transit method, which is the most common one. It measures the dimming of stars, which happens when a planet crosses the stars’ path.
