Kepler 37B: NASA Finds Smallest Planet Yet Outside of Solar System
Kepler-37b, the smallest planet yet outside of the solar system, has been found by NASA — according to Fox News.
Kepler, NASA’s telescope launched in 2009, detected the new planet. Kepler-37b orbits a star 210 light years away in the constellation Lyra. It's one of three known planets in that solar system.
According to Fox News, discoverer Thomas Barclay, of the NASA Ames Research Center in Northern California, was so excited by the discovery that he recited the Star Wars line: "That's no moon."
Meanwhile, University of California Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy, one of the founding fathers of the planet-hunting field, who however wasn't part of the Kepler-37b discovering team, called the latest find "absolutely mind-boggling." "This new discovery raises the specter that the universe is jam packed, like jelly beans in a jar, with planets even smaller than Earth," said Marcy.