Stephen Hawking says Aliens exist

reply to post by jonnywhite

Another thing to consider is that we're discovering more earth-like planets than we expected.

sorry but the opposite is true.

we hoped around 30% of stars would have an earth size planet in the hz. The actual number is around 3% according to the kepler data. The minimum anyone expected was 10% so its even worse than anyone expected.

the 3% figure should rise slightly but we will be lucky to get to 10% and no way will we hit 30% as hoped before kepler launched.

Originally posted by yeti101
reply to post by jonnywhite

 

Another thing to consider is that we're discovering more earth-like planets than we expected.

sorry but the opposite is true.

we hoped around 30% of stars would have an earth size planet in the hz. The actual number is around 3% according to the kepler data. The minimum anyone expected was 10% so its even worse than anyone expected.

the 3% figure should rise slightly but we will be lucky to get to 10% and no way will we hit 30% as hoped before kepler launched.

edit on 14-9-2011 by yeti101 because: (no reason given)

There is no kepler data as far as Earth sized worlds in the HZ yet, because it will take Kepler atleast until 2016 to do this, due to it needing 6 transits for a body that small, so claiming it is at 3 percent is a farse, since the data isnt in yet. We won't know until 2016 how common or not Earth sized worlds in the HZ are.

reply to post by NavalFC


the 3% is extrapolated from the data so far. Kepler scientists released this paper xxx.lanl.gov... which explains it.

We estimate that 1% to 3% of stars like the Sun are expected to have Earth analog planets, based on the Kepler data release of Feb 2011.

Taking both estimates together, we find that the most likely range of nEarth is between 1.1% to 2.8%, with a minimum of 0.8% and maximum of 4.7%