A revolution has occurred in the last two decades in the world of astrophysics. 
It all started in the mid '90s with the first discovery of new worlds around other stars. The term "Extrasolar planet" (or Exoplanet) became widely used to identify planets orbiting a star other than the Sun. A planet is a celestial body massive enough to be bounded by its self gravity (unlike a rock or an asteroid, that are kept together by electromagnetic forces), but not massive enough to produce energy through nuclear fusion (as stars do). 
%I remember hearing about the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, a giant planet about 50 light years away, on a bus ride to school. I was blown away. That night I could not sleep, my mind racing towards the amazing implications of that discovery. Little I knew that was just the beginning.  

Planetary scientists have confirmed the existence of more than 1500 exoplanets and have identified a few thousand exoplanet candidates that require more investigation before they can join the planet club (see \href{http://exoplanets.org/}{exoplanets.org} for the most recent figures). The most remarkable discoveries came only in the last couple of years thanks to the \href{http://kepler.nasa.gov/}{Kepler} space telescope. This amazing instrument has been patiently looking for the extremely tiny dimming induced by the passage of a planet in front of its host star.
%, and helped to  answer two fundamental questions:
%\begin{itemize}
%\item How common are planets?
%\item How common are planets similar to the Earth (Earth-like exoplanets)?
%\end{itemize}

The wealth of data provided by Kepler has revealed an astonishing fact: "When you wish upon a star, you are wishing upon a star with planets" (W. Borucki). There is on average \textbf{one planet orbiting every star in the Universe} \citep{2013ApJ...764..105S, 2012Natur.481..167C}. Just in our Galaxy this means we have 100 billion planets. Since we have about 100 billion galaxies in the Universe, there are about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = $10^{22}$  planets out there. 
%To put it in the words of W. Borucki, Principal Investigator of the KEPLER satellite: "When you wish upon a star, you %are wishing upon a star with planets".
 