Editorial: "Kepler shows us a galaxy fit for life"
WHAT are the billions of stars and planets beyond our solar system up to? Do they behave like ours or are we a freak of nature?
While definitive answers are far from nailed down, a recent deluge of observations released by NASA's Kepler space telescope has tripled the number of candidate alien planets, taking the total to 1235, and has already yielded many tantalising revelations.
"We're starting to see what's out there; the groups of planets that exist," says Gregory Laughlin at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is not part of the Kepler team but is studying their data closely. "It's very exciting."