The Milky Way Galaxy is composed of more planets than stars, a study published in the journal Nature revealed.

In the report, researchers discovered an average of 1.6 planets per star in the Milky Way, 62 percent of which are close to the size of Earth. Coupled with the most recent calculations from the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, which show an estimated 500 billion stars in the Milky Way, this amounts to approximately 800 billion planets!

The findings were made using a new technique called gravitational microlensing, which has the ability to probe planets farther away from the stars that they orbit. It unveiled that “stars are orbited by planets as a rule, rather than the exception.”

Since the discovery of the first exoplanet or planet outside of the solar system in 1995, planetary findings have continued to increase. By the end of 2011, only about 600 had been recorded.

This new scientific finding makes all previous calculations obsolete.