Planet bonanza hints at worlds similar to our own

(Phys.org) --For planet hunters, this has been a bountiful year. A team lead of astronomers at the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center have used data from NASA's Kepler space telescope to uncover 715 new exoplanets. The newly-verified objects orbit 305 different stars, and therefore include multi-world systems that are reminiscent of the Sun's own planetary family. The announcement of these discoveries was followed by news that Kepler had also found the first Earth-size planet in the ha...