4 ms·
Only about one in a hundred planetary systems would be properly aligned to be detected by Kepler. The purpose of Kepler is to gather statistics on the frequency
by InclinedPlane 9y ago
Only about one in a hundred planetary systems would be properly aligned to be detected by Kepler. The purpose of Kepler is to gather statistics on the frequency of occurrence of different kinds of planets.
2700 confirmed planets out of 145k monitored stars indicates that planets are very common, around most stars, since there are an estimated 270,000 planets of similar type in that sample that just have inconveniently aligned orbits.
Similarly, 30 confirmed near-Earth mass planets translates to 3000 per 145k stars (nearly 2%!), and thus literally billions in our galaxy alone.
- PaulHoule 9y agoIn our own solar system most of the liquid water is outside the frost line; most of the "possibly habitable places" are not terrestrial such as several moons of Jupiter, Saturn and beyond as well as possibly Kuiper Belt Objects. If life that evolved in that sort of environment managed to work its way up to the surface it could keep its lifestyle living on Kuiper Belt Objects and probably other lumps of rock and ice between the stars and possibly not have that much interest in anything that happens on our side of the frost line.