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Photo: Playback/Pixabay
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NASA reported this Tuesday (22) that the number of exoplanets (planets located outside the solar system) discovered has reached 5,005. According to the agency, the planetary odometer — the count of confirmed exoplanets — turned on the 21st, with the latest batch of 65 new exoplanets cataloged in its archive, which began in the 1990s.
Since then, NASA has recorded exoplanet discoveries that appear in peer-reviewed scientific papers and that have been confirmed through detection methods or analytical techniques. The findings contribute to studies on possible signs of life across the universe.
The more than 5,000 exoplanets detected so far include small, rocky worlds such as Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter and so-called “hot Jupiters”, which are in extremely close orbits around their stars.
