Lots of Ink: Lots of planets out there, says new extrapolation down to Earth-sized ones
This is just synchronicity of no meaning, but somehow nothing but space news rose to attention this morning before time ran out (actually, SF Chronicle has a nice story of rare species like red foxes returning to the Sierra, but it’s behind a pay wall for now). Below you’ll see news bursts on dark matter, on sending astronauts one-way to Mars, and on separate discovery that one-way robots already there may see fresh signs of recent, very salty water.
The finale: news off a paper in today’s Science by two UC Berkeley researchers who now, even more confidently than people like them have said before, say that Earth-sized planets must be exceedingly common. It’s an extrapolation deduction. They haven’t seen many, if any, like us in orbit and mass, but the trend lines all point to a populations peak ahead of them as they push their instruments to see such minuscule stellar companions. So they say. Time’s short so I’ll just list as many as possible. Have a great weekend everybody.
Just one comment. Not much heavy news here. One of the authors at least, Cal’s famed planet hunter Geoff Marcy, has been arguing for years that the extrapolation of known planet populations down to Earth-mass objects has consistently implied there are a lot of them, and most are small.
Stories:
- USA Today ScienceFair – Elizabeth Wise: 23% of stars may have Earth-sized planets ;
- Washington Post – Marc Kaufman: Galaxy may have gobs of Earth-size planets ;
- Register (UK) Lewis Page: Alien Earthlike worlds ‘like grains of sand’ say ‘wobble’ boffins ; That’s a new use of boffin. Sort of clever allusion to doppler method of detection too.
- BBC – Pallab Ghosh: Earth-sized worlds much more common than giant planets ;
- San Jose Mercury News – Lisa Krieger: Nearly 1 in 4 stars like the sun may support Earth-size planets ;
- Los Angeles Times – Thomas H. Maugh II: Many Earth-like planets orbit sun-like stars ;
- Space.com via MSNBC – Charles Q. Choi: How many alien Earths? More than expected ;
- Sky & Telescope – Kelly Beatty: How Many Earths?
- Daily Mail (UK) David Derbyshire: We are not alone: One in four stars ‘may have Earth-like planets in orbit around them” ;
- Cosmos (Australia) Heather Catchpole: Earth-like planets common in outer space ;
- AAAS ScienceNow – Richard A. Kerr: No Lack of Exo-Earths Out There ;
- Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts: Other Earths? A new estimate raises the odds of finding them ;
Grist for the Mill:
NASA-JPL Press Release, UC Berkeley Press Release ;
- Charlie Petit
