You should't feel as alone today as you did yesterday. NASA says it has confirmed the existence of 715 new exoplanets beyond our solar system, many of them not that different from Earth in terms of size.
NASA has announced a whole new world of whole new worlds revealed in data from the now crippled planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft. In a press conference on Wednesday, the Kepler team said it has verified the existence of 715 previously unconfirmed planets circling 305 other stars.
This is the biggest single haul of verified planets ever culled from Kepler data, bringing the total number of confirmed planets beyond our solar system to just under 1,700. Perhaps even more exciting is the fact that 95 percent of these newly discovered planets are smaller than Neptune, making them relatively the same size as Earth in a galactic sense -- Neptune is only four times the size of Earth, whereas Jupiter is over 10 times larger than our home planet (in terms of circumference).
Additionally, four of the new planets are even closer to the size of Earth (less than 2.5 times our size) and also circle their sun in its habitable zone where conditions for liquid water and perhaps life could be possible.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57619594-1/kepler-data-dig-strikes-galactic-gold-with-715-new-planets/
