On the downside, serious SF writers can no longer just make up planets of nearby stars to suit their stories.
Originally shared by Larry Panozzo
The conference just ended!
Hundreds of new planet candidates (219 to be exact) and 10 new potentially habitable worlds, bringing that total up to 49.
They also confirmed for us what we all learned in elementary school: there are two classes of planets: rocky ones 75% bigger in radius than Earth or smaller, and gaseous giants around Neptune’s size. Relatively few planets exist between those classes.
They showed a plot during the conference of the new exoplanets, which I’ll put in the comments. One data point was ~1.2 times the radius of Earth with an orbital period about the same as Mercury’s. I don’t know the size of its star yet, but that could be unpleasantly hot. Another world looked to be ~1.5 times the radius of Earth with an orbital period of ~300 days. Lastly, one was .5 times the radius of Earth with the same 300-day orbital period.
Exciting times.
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