Abstract
BackgroundThe search for a habitable extrasolar planet has long interested scientists, but only recently have the tools become available to search for such planets. In the past decades, the number of known extrasolar planets has ballooned into the hundreds, and with it, the expectation that the discovery of the first Earth-like extrasolar planet is not far off.Methodology/Principal FindingsHere, we develop a novel metric of habitability for discovered planets and use this to arrive at a prediction for when the first habitable planet will be discovered. Using a bootstrap analysis of currently discovered exoplanets, we predict the discovery of the first Earth-like planet to be announced in the first half of 2011, with the likeliest date being early May 2011.Conclusions/SignificanceOur predictions, using only the properties of previously discovered exoplanets, accord well with external estimates for the discovery of the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet and highlight the the usefulness of predictive scientometric techniques to understand the pace of scientific discovery in many fields.
Highlights
The search for a habitable extrasolar planet has long interested scientists, but only recently have the observational tools become available to search for such planets [1]
In order to do this, we develop a metric of habitability for all discovered planets, and use this to arrive at a prediction for when the first habitable planet is expected to be discovered
While the transit method provides accurate estimates of the mass, M of a planet, the radial velocity method yields an estimate for M sin (i), where i is an unknown inclination for the planetary system, thereby only giving a lower bound for M
Summary
The search for a habitable extrasolar planet has long interested scientists, but only recently have the observational tools become available to search for such planets [1]. Using the habitability time series of previously discovered exoplanets, we created a bootstrap method to predict when the first Earth-like planet would be discovered. Discovery Date Prediction In order to create a robust estimate of the date of discovery of the first Earth-like planet, the following factors were considered: 1.
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