[ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets

[Alfio Puglisi]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Tomaz Kristan <protokol2020 at gmail.com>wrote:

> BTW, as I can recall, Kepler was supposed to  be able to detect free
oxygen on those far away planets. Or it was just a NASA's marketing, like
these 10^10 Goldilocks planets now.

Actually, no it cannot do that. Kepler only detect brightness changes, when
a planet partly eclipses its star relative to us. In order to detect
oxygen, you'll need observations with telescopes capable of taking spectra.
While most ground-based telescope are equipped for that, I don't know if
any of them are sensitive enough - those planets are extremely faint.

Alfio
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