A new study of light anomalies combined with results from a Korea Microlensing Telescope Network microlensing survey show that super-Earths exist as far from their host star as our gas giants are from the sun. Which means that Earth-like exoplanets are a lot more common NASA press releases over every new statistical wobble suggest.

Microlensing is an effect that occurs when a foreground object, such as a star or planet, passes between us and a more distant star, causing light to curve from the source, and an apparent increase in the object’s brightness. Those fluctuations help locate alien worlds but such alignments are so rare that only 237 out of the more than 5,000 exoplanets ever discovered have been identified using the microlensing method. In this case, microlensing signals were used to locate OGLE-2016-BLG-0007, a super-Earth with a mass ratio roughly double that of Earth’s and an orbit wider than Saturn’s. 



Finding planets close to their star, like Mercury, are relatively easy but planets with wider paths can be difficult to detect and the new microlensing finding may allow better predictions about the commonality of super-Earths and Neptune-like planets and the other comprising gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn. 

Citation: Weicheng Zang et al. ,Microlensing events indicate that super-Earth exoplanets are common in Jupiter-like orbits.Science388,400-404(2025).DOI:10.1126/science.adn6088