An exoplanet is any planet beyond our solar system. Most orbit other stars, but free-floating exoplanets, called rogue planets, orbit the galactic center and are untethered to any star. To date, thousands of exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed. The 4001 project is a community-driven universe that utilizes specific data from NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program to randomly generate exoplanets that could possibly be found beyond our solar system. The 4001 project will evolve alongside the scientific method for detecting exoplanets, and only 4001 will be created based on this data, providing you with a unique opportunity to be part of our universe!

One of my childhood dreams was the possibility of getting a glimpse beyond our solar system. We are the first generation to know, with certainty, that exoplanets really exist. There are places beyond our imagination. Terrestrial exoplanets, for example, are at a very special distance from their star. This spot is called the habitable zone, where life might be possible. If a planet is just at the right temperature, it could contain liquid water, and then there could be life. As technology advances at a rapid pace, more and more exoplanets are being discovered exponentially. The 4001 project is a small sample of the universe, and the possibilities are infinite, far beyond our imagination. I wondered if it was possible to generate candidates based on real known information, so with my dev team, we began to teach our script where to find possible sources of information, such as surfaces, terrains, and many more. We called this process 'feeding the code', and then something happened. An Unexpected Miracle. This is ER124, our first unedited image, where the outcome of the script was similar to what we were looking for. This Exoplanet was never minted.

So far scientists have categorized exoplanets into the following types: Gas giant, Neptunian-like, Super Earth and Terrestrial. The planets beyond our solar system are called exoplanets, and they come in a wide variety of sizes, from gas giants larger than Jupiter to small, rocky planets about as big around as Earth or Mars. They can be hot enough to boil metal or locked in deep freeze. They can orbit their stars so tightly that a year lasts only a few days; they can orbit two suns at once. Some exoplanets are sunless rogues, wandering through the galaxy in permanent darkness. Each planet type varies in interior and exterior appearance depending on composition. Gas giants are planets the size of Saturn or Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, or much, much larger. More variety is hidden within these broad categories. Hot Jupiters, for instance, were among the first planet types found - gas giants orbiting so closely to their stars that their temperatures soar into the thousands of degrees, Fahrenheit or Celsius. Neptunian-like planets are similar in size to Neptune or Uranus in our solar system. They likely have a mixture of interior compositions, but all will have hydrogen and helium-dominated outer atmospheres and rocky cores. We’re also discovering Mini-Neptunes, planets smaller than Neptune and bigger than Earth. No planets of this size or type exist in our solar system. Super-Earths are typically terrestrial planets that may or may not have atmospheres. They are more massive than Earth, but lighter than Neptune. Terrestrial planets are Earth sized and smaller, composed of rock, silicate, water or carbon. Further investigation will determine whether some of them possess atmospheres, oceans or other signs of habitability. There are also some theoretical Exoplanets that haven't been confirmed yet. You might discover some very rare gems.

Exoplanets: The 4001 Project, was inspired by Project Mercury, the free world's first program for manned exploration of space. The chronology of this project was published by NASA in a special publication, SP-4001. The greater significance is that Project Mercury was conceived and carried out solely for peaceful purposes. In just three years, the goal of Mercury, which was to orbit a man in space and return him safely to Earth, was accomplished, with less power than a modern cell phone. Through decades of investigation and application of aerodynamics, rocket propulsion, celestial mechanics, aerospace medicine, and electronics, Project Mercury took humans beyond the atmosphere into space orbit. It also confirmed the potential for human mobility in the universe. Thousands of people dedicated their efforts to this program. Exoplanets: The 4001 Project, is a way to honor them. The seven Mercury astronauts were (from left) Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Gordon Cooper and Scott Carpenter.

Our process works in this way: First, we spend many hours searching for resources such as backgrounds and surfaces. We also have a photographer who takes pictures of nature and mixes them using Photoshop. This is done once every two drops of around 600/1000 exoplanets. If you take a close look, you can see that some of the exoplanets are blended with pictures of rocks, real dust, and grass. It's an amazing and fun process. Once we have checked them all, we create a dataset. The code is then fed with this new source of information.* Now we have sources, backgrounds, and a sphere. Here comes the fun part - we use math. If we let the code mix the assets as they are, all rarities will be shown the same way. For example, wild auroras will always have the same size and shape. But we use a fractal process where all those separate assets can be modified by a random numeric number, giving us literally infinite possibilities. That's how we know that we can make 1 million Exoplanets without two being equal. Now we have sources, backgrounds, and a sphere with a unique rarity on it. All the information is randomly assigned into the script with some tricks. Once we start, we can stop whenever we want. This is how we use a seed - the magic number. You may know that random in coding isn't precisely random. We must set rules to randomize it. If we always enter the same seed, with the same number of sources and the exact same sphere size, we can run this 1 million times and the process will always be identical. Just changing one little thing changes everything, like the universe itself. *Note: At the time we launched the project, we tried to use AI but found that it wasn't advanced enough to meet our needs. AI is a rapidly evolving field, and we felt it wasn't the right tool for our project at the time. That's why we decided to use a script.