"These statistics show that planets around stars are ordinary, not special. From now on, we must see that the galaxies are not only packed with billions of stars, imagine that they are surrounded extrasolar planets," said Arnaud Cassan from the Paris Institute of Astrophysics.
Noted earlier there have been more than 700 planets outside our solar system that confirmed. In the meantime, there's more 2300 candidates have been discovered in NASA's Kepler spacecraft is waiting for certainty.
The planets were discovered by two methods, the transit photometry and radial velocity. The first method of detecting planets wink as a sign of a star's light that surrounds the planet. The second way to see the "wobble" stars as a result of the planet's gravity.
In this study, researchers used a new method called gravitational microlensing. In this method, the planet was detected in the presence of the star's light is refracted or dimagnifikasi by surrounding objects.
Researchers reveal, gravitational microlensing has advantages over the transit photometry and radial velocity. Gravitational velocity can detect planets located far from its star, in contrast to two other techniques that bias on the planet near the star.
Based on the research, researchers showed that one-sixth of the Milky Way is populated by a Jupiter-sized planets, planet half the size of Neptune and two thirds by the super-Earth. That was only available on the distance that has been detected.
"Further, we found that low-mass planets, like super-Earth (1-10 times the mass of Earth) and the similar Neptune, is more abundant than giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn (roughly 6-7 times more than low mass planets ), "said Cassan as quoted Space, Wednesday (01/11/2012).
The planet is actually there in the Milky Way may be a bit more than had been counted. In the distance can not be detected, there may still be many more planets.
In other findings, published last year and performed with the microlensing technique indicate the presence of Jupiter-sized planets floating alone, orphans, not orbiting stars. The number of planets is estimated to exceed the planet's "normal" up to 50 percent.
"The research results show that the microlensing planets exist anywhere, not always orbiting the star," said Cassan.
Meanwhile, the "anomaly" is the discovery of other planets are in binary star systems. This used to only be imagined in science fiction film Star Wars.
William Welsh, an astronomer from San Diego State University, as quoted by AP Wednesday, said, "Nature seems to like to form a planet because the planet is found in what is estimated to be difficult to support the formation of planets."
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