Astroblog: And No, One in Two Stars Do NOT Have an Earth-Like Planet Around Them.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

And No, One in Two Stars Do NOT Have an Earth-Like Planet Around Them.

The headlines in the Telegraph said "Alien life boost after Nasa finds one in two Suns has Earth like planets" and the Adelaide Advertiser said "One in Two Stars may Support Life" (page 22 of Tuesdays edition).

They have discovered the Kepler planet bonanza (somewhat late).

But, no, sorry. They have mangled the quite reasonable statement that one in every two sun-like stars may have planets per se by conflating planets with Earth-like planets (and Earth-like planets in the habitable zone). Only 54 of the 1200+ planets detected by Kepler were found to be in their stars habitable zone, and of those only two were roughly Earth mass (and a couple of Super Earths like KOI 702.03, visualized above) . There may be a lot more Earth-like planets out there, but not 50% of them having Earth-like worlds based on present data.

Labels: exoplanet, extrasolar planet, science communicators