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Last year, astronomers were excited to discover that the number of exoplanets increases toward smaller sizes, suggesting that there are many Earth-size planets in the galaxy. A new analysis of three years of Kepler data shows that this increase plateaus around twice Earth size. Nevertheless, Earth-like planets occur around at least 17 percent of sun-like stars.
Tag: exoplanets
Exocomets may be as common as exoplanets
January 7, 2013:
Astronomers have found thousands of potential exoplanets and many stars with massive disks of gas and dust that suggest planets are forming, but not much of the stuff intermediate between dust and planets, such as asteroids, planetesimals and comets. UC Berkeley astronomer Barry Welsh has looked closely at a number of stars with dust disks and found evidence that they also have comets.
