Exoplanet Count Tops 700 128
astroengine writes "On Friday, the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia registered more than 700 confirmed exoplanets. Although this is an amazing milestone, it won't be long until the 'first thousand' are confirmed. Only two months ago, the encyclopedia — administered by astrobiologist Jean Schneider of the Paris-Meudon Observatory — registered 600 confirmed alien worlds. Since then, there has been a slew of announcements including the addition of a batch of 50 exoplanets by the European Southern Observatory's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (or HARPS) in September."
Re:Why so much disbelief in aliens among scientist (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. Basically, as soon as our methods allow to detect lower-mass planets we immediately detect them.
It's just that now our tools are not yet good enough to detect Earth-sized planets in habitable zone.
Re:Why so much disbelief in aliens among scientist (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention objects with really short orbits, which means much more rapid observations. Any planet will only pass between the star and us once per cycle (assuming it's in the plane) which makes it much easier to find orbits measures in weeks or months instead of years and decades. Like for example our Jupiter has an orbit of almost 12 years. They need two measurements to get a period and want three for confirmation, that's 36 years. How long have we been searching for exoplanets again? Oh right, we wouldn't have found our own solar system yet.