NASA announced on Feb.25 the discovery of 715 planets, including four planets more than twice the size of Earth, with the help of NASA's Kepler telescope.
The discovery increases the amount of known planets in our galaxy to 1,700, according to RT.
Scientists used a new confirmation technique to make the biggest discovery of exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, Fox News reported. NASA planetary scientist Jack Lissauer referred to the discovery as "the big mother lode" in a teleconference on Feb. 26.
"We almost doubled just today the number of planets known to humanity," Lissauer said.
According to CNN, NASA said four of the planets are in the "habitable zone", meaning they have the qualities to potentially support life.
The discovered planets orbit 305 different stars, and scientists expect that the new technique which found these planets will allow them to make more frequent and detailed discoveries of planets in the future, CNN reported.
"We have been able to open the bottleneck to access the mother lode and deliver to you more than 20 times as many planets as has ever been found and announced at once," Lissauer said.
Kepler was first launched in 2009, and has brought in a huge amount of smaller planets from multi-planet systems, according to the Los Angeles Times. The number of Earth-sized planets has increased by 400 percent, while the number of super-Earths increased by 600 percent. Scientists have increased the number of Jupiter-sized planets by only 2 percent, but the number of Neptune-sized planets rose by 200 percent.
The announcement only covered the first two years of Kepler's research, which indicates that there could be more announcements made of the existence of more planets in the future, according to RT.
"Although we've gotten the big numbers this time, when we have a full four years of Kepler data that will have more planets in the habitable zone," Lissauer said. "We need more transits."
Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said humans are discovering more planets this size throughout the galaxy, RT reported.
"Literally, whenever (Kepler) can see them, it finds them," Seager said. "That's why we have confidence that there will be planets like Earth in other places."
