Scientists predict Earth-like planets around most stars

5 February 2015


The new research, led by PhD student Tim Bovaird and Associate Professor Charley Lineweaver from The Australian National University (ANU), made the finding by applying a 200 year old idea to the thousands of exo-planets discovered by the Kepler space telescope.

They found the standard star has about two planets in the so-called goldilocks zone, the distance from the star where liquid water, crucial for life, can exist.




The Kepler space telescope is biased towards seeing planets very close to their stars, that are too hot for liquid water, but the team extrapolated from Kepler’s results using the theory that was used to predict the existence of Uranus.

“We used the Titius-Bode relation and Kepler data to predict the positions of planets that Kepler is unable to see,” Associate Professor Lineweaver said.

The research is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. It is available online.

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