#1 How Common are Terrestrial, Habitable Planets?
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 3:41 am
universe today
[quote]Once again news from the Kepler mission is making the rounds, this time with a research paper outlining a theory that Earth-like planets may be more common around class F, G and K stars than originally expected.
In the standard stellar classification scheme, these type of stars are similar or somewhat similar to our own Sun (which is a Class G star); Class F stars are hotter and brighter and Class K stars are cooler and dimmer. Given this range of stars, the habitable zones vary with different stars. Some habitable planets could orbit their host star at twice the distance Earth orbits our Sun or in the case of a dim star, less than Mercury’s orbit.
How does this recent research show that small, rocky, worlds may be more common that originally thought?
Dr. Wesley Traub, Chief Scientist with NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program outlines his theory in a recent paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.
Based on Traub’s calculations in his paper, he formulates that roughly one-third of class F, G, and K stars should have at least one terrestrial, habitable-zone planet. Traub bases his assertions on data from the first 136 days of Kepler’s mission.
Initially starting with 1,235 exoplanet candidates, Traub narrowed the list down to 159 exoplanets orbiting F class stars, 475 orbiting G class stars, and 325 orbiting K class stars – giving a total of 959 exoplanets in his model. For the purposes of Traub’s model, he defines terrestrial planets as those with a radius of between half and twice that of Earth. The mass ranges specified in the model work out to between one-tenth Earth’s mass and ten times Earth’s mass – basically objects ranging from Mars-sized to the theoretical super-Earth class.
The paper specifies three different ranges for the habitable zone: A “wideâ€
[quote]Once again news from the Kepler mission is making the rounds, this time with a research paper outlining a theory that Earth-like planets may be more common around class F, G and K stars than originally expected.
In the standard stellar classification scheme, these type of stars are similar or somewhat similar to our own Sun (which is a Class G star); Class F stars are hotter and brighter and Class K stars are cooler and dimmer. Given this range of stars, the habitable zones vary with different stars. Some habitable planets could orbit their host star at twice the distance Earth orbits our Sun or in the case of a dim star, less than Mercury’s orbit.
How does this recent research show that small, rocky, worlds may be more common that originally thought?
Dr. Wesley Traub, Chief Scientist with NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program outlines his theory in a recent paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.
Based on Traub’s calculations in his paper, he formulates that roughly one-third of class F, G, and K stars should have at least one terrestrial, habitable-zone planet. Traub bases his assertions on data from the first 136 days of Kepler’s mission.
Initially starting with 1,235 exoplanet candidates, Traub narrowed the list down to 159 exoplanets orbiting F class stars, 475 orbiting G class stars, and 325 orbiting K class stars – giving a total of 959 exoplanets in his model. For the purposes of Traub’s model, he defines terrestrial planets as those with a radius of between half and twice that of Earth. The mass ranges specified in the model work out to between one-tenth Earth’s mass and ten times Earth’s mass – basically objects ranging from Mars-sized to the theoretical super-Earth class.
The paper specifies three different ranges for the habitable zone: A “wideâ€
