Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientists announced the discovery of eight new exoplanets in the "Goldilocks" zone of a galaxy 470 million light years distant.

Guillermo Torres, one of the scientists and lead author of the paper, said most of the newly found planets are rocky and appear to be similar to our planet.

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The scientists named two of the planets Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b. They said these two are the most similar to Earth among the eight new exoplanets. They said these two exoplanets orbit a red dwarf star smaller and colder than the Sun.

Scientists explained that Kepler-438b has a 35-day year while Kepler-442b orbits once every 112 days. Both of them have smaller orbits, which mean their years are shorter than what we have on earth.

"For our calculations, we chose to adopt the broadest possible limits that can plausibly lead to suitable conditions for life," Torres explained.

Based on their calculation and theories, scientists were able to figure out that Kepler-438b has a 70 percent chance of being habitable, while Kepler-442b has 97 percent chance of having an Earth-like environment.

Currently, there are 1,876 recognized exoplanets orbiting stars other than our own Sun. There are twice as many planetary discoveries still waiting for confirmation. Most of them were discovered using the Kepler telescope.

The Kepler telescope was designed specifically to observe a portion of the Milky Way galaxy in search of planets Earth-like in size and that could have a habitable environment.

TagsGoldilocks Zone, planets, eight planets, Milky Way, Galaxy, space exploration, NASA, kepler telescope, Kepler-442b, Kepler-438b