Good News from Kepler
The year starts with good news from other worlds. And I mean that quite literally, since the first new planets discovered by the Kepler Mission were announced yesterday. (Kepler 4b to Kepler 8b are the new discoveries. The other three planets were already known to exist in Kepler’s field of view.)
The list doesn’t seem to be anything to write home about if you just glance at it. You have one hot Neptune and four hot Jupiters, all of them extremely close to their parent stars. But that can be deceiving, because you have to take into account the fact that these planets were confirmed using the data gathered over just six weeks and that at least three passes of the planet in front of its parent star are required before it’s taken into account. That currently limits the potential discoveries to planets that are very close to their parent stars, not to mention that the discovery of such planets is favored by the transit method, which is used by Kepler.
Considering that the announcement mentioned hundreds of possible planet signatures that are being analyzed, I have high hopes for this mission and think that, by the end of 2012, it may well discover more than three times the total number of exoplanets that were known to us at the end of 2009. And that’s by looking at just a small portion of our galaxy and using a method that requires the plane of these distant solar systems to be aligned with Kepler’s camera and can cause the rejection of planet signatures due to irregularities or notable events that would cause variations, such as collisions, alignments, large satellites or, yes, even major signs of a civilization.
That said, I think any newly discovered planet is an important event, because for each planet found there must be many more out there that this method in particular and our current technology in general couldn’t possibly notice. So wait and see what else will be announced, even though no planet capable of supporting any kind of life we know of could possibly be detected by Kepler earlier than 2012 (or perhaps 2011, in case of significantly cooler parent stars). After all, the search for a “new Earth” is mainly just marketing, because finding a planet similar to our own hundreds or even thousands of light years away wouldn’t really be of much help. A planet is a planet and all are important in our attempt to figure out exactly what’s out there.
