There are more than 5,000 worlds beyond our solar system, says NASA

The discovery of planets located outside the solar system, also called exoplanets, contributes to the studies of possible signs of life in the universe.

This Tuesday (22), NASA reached a significant milestone by surpassing the count of more than 5,000 exoplanets discovered by the telescopes of the North American space agency. According to NASA, the 30-year journey has expanded knowledge of the universe, until then restricted to the planets of the solar system.

The planetary counter has passed the mark with the latest batch of 65 exoplanets added to NASA’s Exoplanet Archive. The archive records exoplanet discoveries that appear in peer-reviewed scientific papers and that have been confirmed using various detection methods or by analytical techniques.

According to NASA, the more than 5,000 planets found so far include small, rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and so-called “hot Jupiters,” which are in extremely close orbits around their stars. .

In the list of finds, there are also “super-Earths”, which are possible rocky worlds larger than ours, and “mini-Neptunes”, smaller versions of our system’s Neptune. The findings also include planets orbiting two stars at the same time and planets orbiting the collapsed remains of dead stars.

Researcher Jessie Christiansen, archival science lead and scientist at NASA’s Institute for Exoplanet Science at Caltech in Pasadena, says the milestone goes beyond numerical statistics. “Each one of them is a new world, a whole new planet. I’m excited for each one because we don’t know anything about them,” Jessie said in a statement.

first discoveries

Our galaxy is estimated to contain hundreds of billions of these planets. The discoveries gained momentum in 1992, with strange new worlds orbiting an even stranger star.

According to NASA, it was a type of neutron star known as a Pulsar, a rapidly rotating stellar corpse that pulses with millisecond bursts of searing radiation. Measuring small changes in the timing of the pulses allowed scientists to reveal planets in orbit around the star.

Finding just three planets around this spinning star essentially opened the floodgates, said Alexander Wolszczan, the lead author of the paper that, 30 years ago, revealed the first planets to be confirmed outside our solar system.

“If you can find planets around a neutron star, the planets must be basically everywhere,” Wolszczan said. “The planet’s production process has to be very robust.”

New Age

With the advancement of space technology, experts estimate that we are facing a new era of discoveries beyond the identification of new exoplanets.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launched in 2018, continues to make new exoplanet discoveries. However, soon next-generation telescopes and their highly sensitive instruments, starting with the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, will capture light from exoplanet atmospheres, reading what gases are present to potentially identify telltale signs of habitable conditions.

According to NASA, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, due to launch in 2027, will make new exoplanet discoveries using a variety of methods. The European Space Agency (ESA) Ariel mission, launching in 2029, will observe exoplanet atmospheres. With some of NASA’s technology on board, called Case, the mission is expected to focus on exoplanet clouds and haze.

“In my opinion, it’s inevitable that we’ll find some kind of life somewhere – probably of some primitive kind,” Wolszczan said. For him, the close connection between the chemistry of life on Earth and the chemistry found throughout the universe, as well as the detection of widespread organic molecules, suggests that the detection of life itself is only a matter of time.