NASA announce the discovery of 715 new planets

NASA on Wednesday announced the discovery of 715 new planets, by far the biggest batch of planets ever unveiled at once.

Four of those planets are in what NASA calls the "habitable zone," meaning they have the makeup to potentially support life.

The planets, which orbit 305 different stars, were discovered by the Kepler space telescope and were verified using a new technique.

Now, scientists expect to make new planetary discoveries more frequent and more detailed.

Tuesday's planets all were verified using data from the first two years of Kepler's voyage, meaning there may be many more to come.

The new technique is called "verification by multiplicity," and relies in part on the logic of probability. Instead of searching blindly, the team focused on stars that the technique suggests is likely to have more than one planet in their orbit.

NASA says 95% of the planets discovered by Kepler are smaller than Neptune, which is four times as big as Earth. 

One of them is about twice the size of Earth and orbits a star half the size of Earth's sun in a 30-day cycle.

The other three planets in habitable zones also are all roughly twice the size of Earth.

CNN