[LINK] "Kepler’s Early Results Suggest Earth-Like Planets Are Dime-a-Dozen"

[rfmcdonald]

Continuing today's theme of "What's out there?", the ever-useful 80 Beats some time ago linked to the news that NASA's Kepler planet-hunting missions is finding more than enough small Earth-sized planets to give us reason to believe that worlds like Earth are quite, quite common.

Sasselov did say that what Kepler has learned so far about extrasolar planets offers tantalizing hints that our planet may not be unusual.

Among the hundreds of candidate planets, a large percentage of them appear to be Earth-like – that is, small and rocky, rather than large and gassy, like Jupiter.

"Even before we have confirmed the planets among these hundreds of candidates, we can see statistically that the smaller-sized planets will be more common than the large-sized (Jupiter- and Saturn-like ones) in the sample," Sasselov explained.

That's good news for scientists who hope to one day detect life on another planet. Since life as we know it is thought to require water and Earth-like conditions, planets that look a lot like ours could be habitable.

To date, using a variety of methods, astronomers have confirmed almost 500 planets beyond our solar system, Sasselov said. So far, most of these definitive planet finds have been of the gas giant variety, but that's because they're easier to spot than planets like Earth.

Earth-sized isn't Earth-like, not necessarily, but it does offer up that potential.