Proving even further that we really aren't alone out there, NASA's Kepler Mission has announced a planetary bonanza: more than 700 planets have been confirmed to exist within our galaxy, for a grand total of more than 1,000 planets besides our own in the Milky Way.

According to CNN, of those thousands of planets, only about four are considered in the "habitable zone," meaning that they have the atmospheric requirements to sustain life. These thousands of planets orbit more than 300 different stars, and were verified using a new technique for NASA scientists to confirm the existence of both planets and habitary life.

"We've been able to open the bottleneck to access the mother lode and deliver to you more than 20 times as many planets as has ever been found and announced at once," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

Indeed, NASA's official website confirms that the discovery of this "mother lode" of planets gives new insight to scientists as to not only how planets are formed, but where exactly we on Earth fit in the grand scheme of astronomical time. One planet, in particular, gives scientists the most hope: Kepler-296f orbits a star that is only 5 percent as bright as our own sun, and is twice the size of Earth. However, further research is needed to confirm if the planet is gaseous (surrounded by hydrogen-helium) or aqueous (surrounded by liquid water and a deep ocean). If the latter, it would be considered a "habitable" planet.

All told, NASA has confirmed the existence of almost 2,000 planets, both within the Milky Way and outside of our solar system. "The more we explore the more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of home," said Jason Rowe, research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and co-leader of the research.