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Yes, and it's designed to detect Earth-sized planets as well as larger gas giants.



But detection probability is directly correlated to planet size and shortness of the local year.

Eventually, Kepler and Kepler-like probes will be able to locate all earth-like planets with orbits that cross the path between the star and us. However, this technique will find the larger planets with shorter orbits first.


Yes indeed, but the point is that according to current theories Kepler should already be finding more Earth-sized planets than it has and few inner gas giants. The observable evidence does not match the predicted model.


Can detect is one thing, can detect at the same distance is another. Assume you can detect an earth like planet at say 100 light years and a Jupiter sized planet at 1,000 light years and you find 1000x as many Jupiter sized planets that does not mean there are 1,000x as many just that you can detect them in 1,000x as much space.

Granted I don't know there search pattern but we are talking about less than 1,000 systems at this point. And I think we have found 2 reasonably earth like planets already which suggests there are at a minimum millions of them in this galaxy.




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