Back in 2015 , astronomers announced the groundbreaking discovery of a world not too unlike our own – Kepler-452b . But a new cogitation has cast doubt on whether the planet really exists .
Kepler-452b , located around a star 1,400 light - days from Earth , wasimmediately excitingfor being ground - sized ( 1.6 times our planet ) and orbiting a Sun - like star . That star is 1.5 billion years honest-to-goodness than ours , lead some to suggest the planet was an older cousin of Earth .
As picked up byScientific American , however , there is a statistical opportunity that the planet does not subsist . Looking at data point from the primary foreign mission of Kepler , a study accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and uncommitted onarXivfound a number of planets in Kepler ’s datum that are n’t guaranteed to be real , include this one .
“ We show statistical validation is deficient to corroborate Kepler-452b at the 99 percentage level , and that Kepler-452b should no longer be think a sustain planet , ” the researchers , lead by the SETI Institute in California , notice in their paper .
The squad said there was a 16 to 92 percent chance that the major planet is real , look on how optimistic they ’re being . They came to this ending by average out fault from the missionary work and working out which signals could be either sour consternation or erroneous racket from the telescope ’s instrument .
face at more than 100,000 starsfound by Kepler , which is due toend in several calendar month , the team receive that planets alike in size to Earth with orbits larger than 200 day were the hardest to sustain as real , as their passage were both pocket-sized and infrequent .
This does n’t stand for that Kepler-452b is n’t a planet . Speaking to Scientific American , Natalie Batalha , a co - author on the Kepler-452b discovery paper , said this job was already do it about , and the source do n’t think planets on a typesetter’s case - by - case basis , which is what made Kepler-452b promising .
NASA ’s Exoplanet Science Institute , which catalog worlds beyond our Solar System , said Kepler-452b would hold back its status for now , until “ a more unequivocal refutation ” is write . Confirming this one manner or another , however , might be tricky .
The satellite is due to make its next transit on April 18 . The only scope that could feasibly see this transit , if the major planet really be , is Hubble . But there ’s not enough meter to get a proposal to utilize the telescope to look at the major planet . So astronomers may have to hold off for the planet ’s next transit , May 8 , 2019 , to get to the bottom of it .
