Kepler Finds Even More Exo-Planets

NASA’s Kepler mission has just announced finding some 1,284 new largish balls of rocks and somewhat larger balls of gas orbiting distant stars. That brings the total number of exo-planets discovered to nearly 5,000. That’s 5,000 planets known to exist orbiting distant stars. Wow! They also revealed that 9 of the planets are in the so-called “Goldilocks” zone, which is the orbit around a start believed to be more-or-less optimal for life (as we know it).

As usual, astronomer Phil Plait has a great write up about. Be sure to read it!