Nasa yesterday found an entire solar system with as many planets as our own. The discovery of a new planet around the Kepler-90 star, which is around 2,200 light years away and looks like our own sun, means the distant solar system has a total of eight known planets, reports the Telegraph. A star system with the same number as planets as our own Solar System has been discovered using an artificial intelligence algorithm designed by Google, NASA said in a press conference.

The planet Kepler-90i, is a small rocky planet, which orbits so close to its star that the surface temperature is a ‘scorchingly hot’ 800F (426C).

The Google team applied a neural network to scan weak signals discovered by the Kepler exoplanet-hunting telescope which had been missed by humans.

Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas, Austin, said:  "The Kepler-90 star

system is like a mini version of our solar system. You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer, “For the first time we know for sure the solar system is not the sole record holder for the number of planets.

“Maybe there are systems out here with so many planets they make ours sound ordinary. It’s very possible that Kepler 90 has even more planets we might not even know about.

“There is a lot of unexplored real estate in Kepler-90 system and it would almost be surprising if there were not more planets in the system.”

Kepler has already discovered more than 2,500 exoplanets and 1,000 more which are suspected. The telescope spent four years scanning 150,000 stars looking for dips in their brightness which might suggest an orbiting planet was passing in front.