Scientists Discover 32 New Planets

If you thought astronomers had already discovered all the planets the Universe, think again.

This past week, a group of scientists announced they'd discovered 32 more planets outside our solar system.

Each of these planets orbits a star, just as the Earth orbits the sun.

The scientists don't know yet whether there is life on any of these planets.

But in light of the findings, astronomer Alan Boss said, "The universe must indeed be crowded with habitable worlds," according to the Associated Press.

If any of these other planets are in fact inhabitable, they're still very far away - so far away the scientists can't even see them, really.

The only way the scientists know the 32 newly discovered planets exist is that they've seen the stars those planets orbit "wobble."

They say a "wobble" indicates a planet's gravity is pulling on the star, even if that planet can't be seen.

To detect those "wobbles," the scientists had to use a high-powered piece of equipment called a spectograph.

The spectograph they used is known as HARPS, which stands for High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher.

It's located at an observatory in the South American nation of Chile.

According to published reports, the newly discovered planets are huge.

They range in size from five times the mass of Earth to approximately 240 times the mass of Earth!

(On Earth, your mass is the same thing as your weight.)

The largest of the new planets is so big it's said to be eight times the mass of Jupiter, which is the largest planet in our solar system.

With these latest discoveries, scientists say they've now found more than 400 planets outside our solar system.

And they expect to discover even more.

"Nature doesn't like a vacuum," said astronomer Stephane Udry of the University of Geneva in Switzerland. "If there is space to put a planet, it will put a planet there."