NASA announces the discovery of 5,000 confirmed exoplanets
The number of confirmed exoplanets exceeded 5,000 marks. All these planets became known over the course of thirty years of work by both ground observers and numerous space telescopes.
Until the end of the 20th century, astronomers knew only about a few planets in the solar system, and now, on March 21, 2022, another group of 65 exoplanets has been added to the NASA Exoplanet Archive.
This archive contains records of exoplanet discoveries from scientific articles reviewed by scientists, and all such data must also be confirmed using several different detection or analytical methods.
There are many uncertain planets. But the 5,000 confirmed already are surprising in their diversity, they include small rocky Earth-like worlds, gas giants several times larger than Jupiter, and “hot Jupiters” that are in very close orbits near their parent stars.
There are also “super-terrestrial planets”, which are likely rocky worlds larger than our own, and “mini-Neptunes”, which are smaller versions of Neptunes from the solar system. Planets orbiting several stars at the same time have also been found, and planets that have survived or reappeared near the remnants of dead stars.
However, all of the exoplanets discovered so far represent only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of billions of planets that appear to exist in the Milky Way alone.
All this wave of discoveries began in 1992, after Polish astronomer Alexander Welshan discovered the first exoplanets in a very strange place – near a dead neutron star.
