AJC: Discovery suggests plenty of planets

Discovery suggests plenty of planets | ajc.com: "NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected a 'bonanza' of planets orbiting distant stars near the center of the Milky Way, a discovery scientists say provides the strongest evidence yet that our own galaxy contains billions of worlds, ranging from Jupiter-sized gas giants to rocky planets the size of Earth.

Astronomers and others have lamented the International Astronomical Union's recent 'demotion' of Pluto to the status of dwarf planet, but the latest evidence suggests that planets outside the solar system are a dime a dozen.

'This discovery allows us to say with confidence that there are literally billions of planets in our galaxy,' says Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

The report in the current issue of the British journal Nature officially claims the discovery of just seven new planets and nine 'planet candidates,' bringing the total number of planets now known outside the solar system to more than 200.

But the 'sample' of the stars in galactic center made with the space telescope is so small —- a narrow window of sky less than 2 percent of the area of the full moon —- and yet so richly populated with planets that the astronomers say it suggests that they may be as many as 6 billion Jupiter-sized planets in the Milky Way and billion of others of varying sizes."