The European Southern Observatory's La Silla facility in Chile announced the discovery of 32 new planets outside of the solar system. The exciting part of it is that they provide evidence of many more planets of smaller size than much of what has been discovered previously.
Notes BBC News:
The discovery is exciting because it suggests that low-mass planets could be numerous in our galaxy. "From [our] results, we know now that at least 40% of solar-type stars have low-mass planets. This is really important because it means that low-mass planets are everywhere, basically," explained Stephane Udry from Geneva University, Switzerland. "What's very interesting is that models are predicting them, and we are finding them; and furthermore the models are predicting even more lower-mass planets like the Earth."More info from ESO, or watch ESO's "video press release" below:
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