Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 110, Issue 48, Pages 19273-19278Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1319909110
Keywords
extrasolar planets; astrobiology
Categories
Funding
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Science Mission Directorate
- National Science Foundation
- NASA [NNX12AJ23G, NNX13AJ59G]
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- Office of Science of the US Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- NASA [472035, NNX12AJ23G, NNX13AJ59G, 43367] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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Determining whether Earth-like planets are common or rare looms as a touchstone in the question of life in the universe. We searched for Earth-size planets that cross in front of their host stars by examining the brightness measurements of 42,000 stars from National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Kepler mission. We found 603 planets, including 10 that are Earth size (1-2 R-circle plus) and receive comparable levels of stellar energy to that of Earth (0.25-4 F-circle plus). We account for Kepler's imperfect detectability of such planets by injecting synthetic planet-caused dimmings into the Kepler brightness measurements and recording the fraction detected. We find that 11 +/- 4% of Sun-like stars harbor an Earth-size planet receiving between one and four times the stellar intensity as Earth. We also find that the occurrence of Earth-size planets is constant with increasing orbital period (P), within equal intervals of logP up to similar to 200 d. Extrapolating, one finds 5.7(-2.2)(+1.7)% of Sun-like stars harbor an Earth-size planet with orbital periods of 200-400 d.
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