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AdrianneLee · 3924 days ago · link · · parent · post: NASA's Kepler Mission Announces a Planet Bonanza, 715 New Worlds.
Two interesting things that are happening with this right now: 1. The longer Kepler runs, the closer it gets to finding planets on the same size scale as the Earth. The article mentions they're now finding planets at just 2.5 times the mass of ours, and that should keep decreasing. We are getting close to finding sister planets, how incredible is that? 2. It looks like other 'solar systems' are often flat like ours - many of the planets roughly lined up, not on weird orbits at all angles. This tells us heeeeaps of stuff about how planets most likely form. Literally trying to find planets like ours and at the same time trying to learn how our own was formed.