Bad news for alien life? Earth-size planets may be less common than we thought

An exoplanet host with several background stars. The square grid represents individual pixels from NASA’s TESS satellite.

As many as 200 worlds beyond our solar system discovered by astronomers may be larger than estimated, which could influence the search for extraterrestrial life.

That's the theory of a team of researchers who looked at hundreds of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, observed by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).