The SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center have uncovered 715 new exoplanets using the Kepler telescope.
The newly-discovered planets orbit 305 different stars, some resemble our own solar system, a SETI news release reported.
In this research Kepler found the first Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of star. The planet is positioned so that it could potentially hold life.
"These results are showing us that not only are Earth-sized planets common, but so are multi-planet systems containing potentially habitable worlds," Jason Rowe, a SETI Institute astronomer who co-led the study, said in the news release. "Most of the new planets orbit their host star much closer than Mercury, but a few are beginning to bear a similarity to our own solar system."
A technique called "verification by multiplicity" allows researchers to verify hundreds of planetary systems instead of picking them out from Kepler data individually. The method uses probability arguments that rely on the idea that out of the 150,000 stars seen by Kepler, hundreds have multiple orbiting planets.
This technique helped insure the data was not thrown off by binary stars
"From this work we've also learned that planets in these multiple systems are small, and their orbits are flat and circular, much like our own solar system," Rowe said.
The potentially-habitable Earth-sized planet, dubbed Kepler 186f, was discovered on April 17th by the Kepler team.
"Uncovering these worlds and showing that habitable worlds could be very common has increased the likelihood that there is life -- perhaps abundant life -- elsewhere in the cosmos," David Black, President and CEO of the SETI Institute, said in the news release.
The Kepler mission ended last year due to a technical issue, but could be revived in the future.
"We can't continue to look at the original Kepler star field," Douglas Caldwell, Kepler Instrument Scientist at the SETI Institute, said in the news release. "But spacecraft are built and operated by very smart people, and thanks to the hard work of the entire Kepler team we can now search for planets in a wide variety of environments and conditions, including star forming regions. Doing so will teach us more about how our own planetary system formed and evolved."
"The more we explore the more we find worlds among the stars that remind us of home," Rowe said.
