Transit Timing Effects due to an Exomoon / Earth 2.0, page 1
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Topic started on 15-11-2008 @ 09:42 PM by schrodingers dog
I found this recent article to be rather interesting.
Though I am by no means an expert on the subject, I was not aware that we had the technology to detect planet wobbles.

According to NASA's current planet count, we have discovered 326 planets to date. As I understand it most of them are to massive to be earthlike. However if we can detect their moons and they happen to be within the "habitable" zone the prospects of discovering alien life forms are likely to vastly improve.

HIDDEN alien moons that could harbour life can be revealed by the wobbles of their planets.

Almost all the 30 known exoplanets that sit within the habitable zone of their stars are gas giants. "But they might have rocky, possibly Earth-like moons," says David Kipping of University College London.

His calculations, which will appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, show that such moons would reveal their presence when the planet passes in front of its star as viewed from Earth. A moon would induce a wobble in the planet's orbit, so the planet's position and velocity would differ slightly on each transit. Existing telescopes could detect an Earth-mass moon around a Neptune-mass gas planet, he says.

New Scientist

The full paper is available here.
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