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6/26/2013 10:21:47 AM
2
Question: why do we only ever find super earths? Is it that the method we're using to detect planets can't detect anything smaller? cheers.
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Not an astronomy expert, but I believe that the greater mass of larger planets 'bends' (from what I understand of general relativity) the light from their parent stars more effectively than smaller ones - the article says that the telescope in Chile uses gravitational lensing to detect planets, so it's always going to be easier to detect bigger masses.
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Correct. It's rather obvious that planets of lower masses exist in other star systems, our methods of detection simply aren't efficient enough to notice them. [quote]Microlensing occurs when the gravitational field of a star acts like a lens, magnifying the light of a distant background star. Planets orbiting the lensing star can cause detectable anomalies in the magnification as it varies over time. This method has resulted in only 13 detections as of June 2011, but it has the advantage of being especially sensitive to planets at large separations from their parent stars.[/quote]
