Prediction: Earth-like planets discovered by May 2011

[n2doc]

The first Earth-like planet orbiting another star will be announced in May next year, if the discovery of extrasolar planets continues at its present rate, say researchers Samuel Arbesman from Harvard Medical School in Boston and Gregory Laughlin at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They point out that astronomers have been discovering extrasolar planets at an increasing rate since 1995. The rate of scientific progress, they point out, is often hard to measure, but in certain circumstances, the data is unambiguous and easy to measure, creating a trend.

The discoveries of exo-palnets now follow a well understood pattern, the first extrasolar planets being necessarily massive, many times the size of Jupiter, and so easier to spot. As techniques have improved with the Kepler Space Telescope, for example, astronomers have found smaller planets, some just a few times more massive than Earth.

"It's only a matter of time before more Kepler observations lead to smaller planets with longer period orbits, coming closer and closer to the discovery of the first Earth-analog," says John Morse, head of the astrophysics division at NASA headquarters in Washington.

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http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/09/may-2011-science-researchers-predict-discovery-of-earth-20.html

[Warpy]

1. I hope they start to discover a lot of them

Anything that can destroy geocentric nonsense is great.

[neverforget]

2. Absolutely agree. Plus the science is awesome.

[Fumesucker]

3. Yah but.. "Earth-like" to an astronomer does not mean the same thing..

As "Earth-like" to the general public..

To an astronomer Venus is Earth-like even though it's one of the most hostile environments to life as we know it in our solar system outside the gas giants.