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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a new batch of verified exoplanets [nasa.gov], including nine that are potentially habitable:

NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets – the single largest finding of planets to date. "This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler," said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth."

Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope's July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent – the minimum required to earn the status of "planet." An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques.

[...] In the newly-validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this exclusive group.

Also at NPR [npr.org] and The Register [theregister.co.uk].

False Positive Probabilities For All Kepler Objects of Interest: 1284 Newly Validated Planets and 428 Likely False Positives [iop.org] (DOI: 10.3847/0004-637x/822/2/86)

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