NASA: Billions of Habitable Planets in Milky Way

Billions and billions of stars in the galaxy after all

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered four new planets that are less than twice the size of Earth and which orbit in their star's habitable zone.

It's found 461 new planets in all between May 2009 and March 2011, bringing the total number of potential planets to 2,740, orbiting 2,036 stars. The biggest jump was in the number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates discovered, which grew by 43 and 21 percent respectively.