Madyson Barber, a grad student at the University of North Carolina, was researching young transiting systems in space when she made a remarkable discovery.
If you consider how planets are formed, it kinda makes sense. Large fields of debris coalesce: most of it becomes stellar mass, the stuff that’s moving too quickly to be captured by the star eventually forms satellites, and the stuff that’s moving too quickly to form planets and moons becomes asteroids and interstellar debris.
Almost 6000 according to here https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/. I read some estimation that there could be more than one planet per star on average.
If you consider how planets are formed, it kinda makes sense. Large fields of debris coalesce: most of it becomes stellar mass, the stuff that’s moving too quickly to be captured by the star eventually forms satellites, and the stuff that’s moving too quickly to form planets and moons becomes asteroids and interstellar debris.