Monday, August 02, 2010
How Many Earth-Like Worlds?
Back in June I reported on the Kepler mission announcing 706 exoplanet candidates. They only released 312 candidates, keeping 400 back for further study, with the intention to release the information in early 2011.
Well, the data has been prematurely outed at a TED conference (see also here). The talks suggests that the majority of plaetary candiadates are "earth-like" in that they have radii of less than twice that of earth. Whether they are in earth-like orbits is not clear from the talk and reports (I suspect they will all be hot worlds screaming around their suns). Also, the numbers on the slides that report the Earth-like worlds don't make sense. The total numbers on the slides aren't the sum of the columns, the slide reports round 240 planets, far less than the 400 held back.
Oh well, I'll have to wait for the scientific reports, which will probably be rushed through now.
Well, the data has been prematurely outed at a TED conference (see also here). The talks suggests that the majority of plaetary candiadates are "earth-like" in that they have radii of less than twice that of earth. Whether they are in earth-like orbits is not clear from the talk and reports (I suspect they will all be hot worlds screaming around their suns). Also, the numbers on the slides that report the Earth-like worlds don't make sense. The total numbers on the slides aren't the sum of the columns, the slide reports round 240 planets, far less than the 400 held back.
Oh well, I'll have to wait for the scientific reports, which will probably be rushed through now.
Labels: exoplanet, extrasolar planet
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:23 pm 
Click to read about or order
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Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
