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**Vikonbarius** · 06-24-2012, 11:02 AM

The good news for extra-solar Earth seekers is that terrestrial planets don't seem to have any bias towards the "heavier" stars and can be found orbiting stars with all different levels of metal content. This means there are even more stars that might potentially harbor rocky Earth-sized planets than are likely to harbor Jupiter-sized gas giants.

A bit unexpected. First thing I did was to check if this result was purely theoretical based on a mathematical model of planet formation, in which case it wouldn't be worth much, or if its predominantly experimental. It's experimental, excellent, the following quote is from http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/news...r20120613.html

"new ground-based observations, combined with data collected by NASA's Kepler space telescope, show small planets form around stars with a wide range of heavy element content and suggest they may be widespread in our galaxy. A research team led by Lars A. Buchhave, an astrophysicist at the Niels Bohr Institute and the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the University of Copenhagen, studied the elemental composition of more than 150 stars harboring 226 planet candidates smaller than Neptune."

06-24-2012, 11:02 AM	#6
Vikonbarius Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 433 Senior Member	The good news for extra-solar Earth seekers is that terrestrial planets don't seem to have any bias towards the "heavier" stars and can be found orbiting stars with all different levels of metal content. This means there are even more stars that might potentially harbor rocky Earth-sized planets than are likely to harbor Jupiter-sized gas giants. A bit unexpected. First thing I did was to check if this result was purely theoretical based on a mathematical model of planet formation, in which case it wouldn't be worth much, or if its predominantly experimental. It's experimental, excellent, the following quote is from http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/news...r20120613.html "new ground-based observations, combined with data collected by NASA's Kepler space telescope, show small planets form around stars with a wide range of heavy element content and suggest they may be widespread in our galaxy. A research team led by Lars A. Buchhave, an astrophysicist at the Niels Bohr Institute and the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the University of Copenhagen, studied the elemental composition of more than 150 stars harboring 226 planet candidates smaller than Neptune."
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