"It's really quite exciting because we can exchange ideas about it while we're here at the meeting in the same place, " said Greg Madejski of the Kavli Institute of ParticleAstrophysics and Cosmology.
"Typically planets are announced one or two at a time it's quite exceptional to have 27 announced in a single paper, or 41 in two, " said Jason Steffen, an astrophysicist at the Fermilab Center for ParticleAstrophysics in Batavia, Ill.