![]() Brown dwarfs or low-mass stars might slide by…or the star might be grazed by a neighboring star. Planets aren’t the only things that get in the way. Photo and caption by NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. The phenomenon enables scientists to search for exoplanets that are too distant and dark to detect any other way. As an exoplanet passes in front of a more distant star, its gravity causes the trajectory of the starlight to bend, and in some cases results in a brief brightening of the background star as seen by a telescope. Gravitational microlensing is another phenomenon that Kepler’s K2 mission uses to find exoplanets. These objects cast silhouettes or eclipses, which are recorded as drops in starlight. The spacecraft stares at stars and waits for objects to cross their path. The Kepler telescope is essentially a $600 million shadow spotter. But, if you spill a whole bag of tiny crumbs, you’re going to need a broom. “If you drop a few large crumbs on the floor, you can pick them up one by one. “Planet candidates can be thought of like bread crumbs,” study leader and Princeton University astrophysicist Timothy Morton said during a press conference. But more than 100 of the fresh exoplanets are Earth-sized. Most of the newly verified planets fall into the categories of super-Earth (radius 1.2-1.9 times bigger than Earth’s) or sub-Neptune (radius 1.9-3.1 times bigger than Earth’s). The innovative approach doubles the number of verified exoplanets, raising the tally to more than 3,200. The algorithm sifts through data collected by the Kepler telescope, NASA’s exoplanet observatory, and separates exoplanets circling around foreign stars from false positives. Statistics wins the day! NASA has confirmed 1,284 new exoplanets, the largest number ever announced at once, thanks to an innovative math formula.
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