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Discovered 219 new possible planets outside the Solar System, 10 of which are as large as the Earth and placed in the living area, that is to the right distance from their star in order to have liquid surface water. This was announced by NASA by presenting the latest results of the Kepler space telescope. With this eighth catalog of its mission, the number of potential alien worlds is 4,334: 2,335 of these have been verified as planets, and more than 30 are as large as the Earth in the living area.

"This catalog, resulting from extremely accurate measurements, is the starting point for answering one of the most interesting questions in astronomy: how many Earth-like planets are in our galaxy?" Says Susan Thompson, coordinator of the catalog at Seti Institute Mountain View, California.

Thanks to Kepler's data, a second research group has also been able to accurately measure thousands of planets, revealing two main types of smaller ones: rocky ones bigger than Earth and smaller gaseous ones than Neptune. "We like to think about this planet classification study like that with which biologists identify new animal species," explains Benjamin Fulton, coordinator of Hawaii University at Manoa. "Finding two distinct groups of exoplanets is like finding out that mammals and lizards form two distinct branches of the evolutionary tree."

The discovery of these two types is important for life research, as it indicates that about half of the planets known in the galaxy have no surface or hide behind a thick and overwhelming atmosphere, so they offer a hospitable atmosphere.