Astronomers may have spotted first planets in another galaxy

The detection of planets outside our own solar system used to be big news, but these days we have a couple of thousands of confirmed cases so only the more exciting finds generate a lot of buzz.

In the news today is a find from Xinyu Dai, an astrophysicist and professor at the University of Oklahoma. Using data from the NASA X-ray laboratory in space, he spotted what may be the first group of planets ever discovered beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.

These planets are so far away that no telescope can observe them, so Dai had to use a trick called microlensing. Dai says the planets he discovered are located a massive 3.8 billion light-years away. They range in size from our moon to Jupiter. However, more research will be needed as not everyone is convinced by the current data.

“This discovery, if the interpretation of the data holds up, looks very exciting indeed,” Priyamvada Natarajan, a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale University, told NBC.

But other experts stressed skepticism. David Bennett, a gravitational lensing expert at NASA, said that the research was “interesting” but that the data could be interpreted in a way to suggest the objects were not extragalactic, NBC reported.

More details at Washington Post.