The search for other Earths is hotting up
KEPLER, America’s planet-hunting space probe, is now really getting into its stride. The craft, which is armed with a telescope that can track more than 100,000 stars simultaneously, looks for slight diminutions of light caused by planetary transits. These transits are mini eclipses—the passage of the planet in question through the line of sight between its parent star and Kepler’s telescope. Transit detection can pick up much smaller planets than previous methods based on gravity-induced wobbles in the stellar parent. The hope is that, soon, it will find one as small as Earth.
On February 2nd America’s space agency, NASA, which controls Kepler, announced the latest results from the probe. So far, it has seen transit-like dips in the light from more than 1,000 stars. In the case of 170 of these the pattern of dips suggests at least two planets; for 45 stars it looks as if there may be at least three planets; in eight cases there may be four planets; in one case, five; and in one other instance, six. …
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