> Both those methods would tend to favor finding close and massive planets without necessarily ruling out smaller/more distant ones. They also favor ones whose

> Both those methods would tend to favor finding close and massive planets without necessarily ruling out smaller/more distant ones. They also favor ones whose orbit passes between us and their star, which dims the star and lets us see it. If the planet’s orbit doesn’t block the star, we’ll never know it was there using our current toolset. I read somewhere that only like 2% of all planet’s have orbits that come between us and their star—which seems like a plausible figure to me, it’s a number you can probably derive from some simple math. This means until we find other ways to observe planets, we are only able to see a very small number of them out there. Incidentally if other intelligent life is out there planet hunting using the same method of observing planets pass between the star and the observer, it means the odds of them finding earth are pretty small. They’d have to be positioned such that the earth comes between our sun and their line of sight.