NASA announced a scientific high point as more than 5,000 planets are confirmed to exist beyond the solar system.<\/p>\n
\u201c65 new worlds push the number of exoplanets confirmed by @NASA above 5,000,\u201d the agency wrote Monday on Twitter. \u201cThis represents 30 years of exploration and discovery by astronomers worldwide using telescopes on the ground and in space. We are living in an age of discovery!\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, the agency described the shapes of the planets as \u201csmall, rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and \u2018hot Jupiters\u2019 in scorchingly close orbits around their stars.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are \u2018super-Earths,\u2019 which are possible rocky worlds bigger than our own, and \u2018mini-Neptunes,\u2019 smaller versions of our system\u2019s Neptune,\u201d it added<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just a number,\u201d the statement said, citing Jessie Christiansen, science lead for the archive and a research scientist with NASA\u2019s Exoplanet Science Institute.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEach one of them is a new world, a brand-new planet. I get excited about every one because we don\u2019t know anything about them,\u201d added Christiansen.<\/p>\n
NASA describes an exoplanet as “any planet beyond our solar system.”<\/p>\n
\u201cMost orbit other stars, but free-floating exoplanets, called rogue planets, orbit the galactic center and are untethered to any star,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA announced a scientific high point as more than 5,000 planets are confirmed to exist beyond the solar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,6123,19,17,1024,133,2772],"class_list":{"0":"post-170433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-exoplanets","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-nasa","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-twitter"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115516378004897868","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}