Google has previously discovered lost tribes, missing ships and even a forgotten forest. But now it has also found two entire planets. The technology giant used one its algorithms to sift through thousands of signals sent back to Earth by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope.

One of the new planets was found hiding in the Kepler-90 star system, which is around 2,200 light years away from Earth.

The discovery is important because it takes the number of planets in the star system up to eight, the same as our own Solar System. It is the first time that any system has been found to have as many planets ours.

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.