A Sky Full of Earths

From the current issue of the Marina Times, my Science article:

An artist’s conception of Kepler-22b, a planet in the
habitable zone of its star. It is the first planet that NASA’s
Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star’s
 habitable zone, but scientists are now finding potentially
 habitable planets by the dozens. photo: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

SCIENCE
A Sky Full of Earths
By John Zipperer
December 2012

Stroll along Crissy Field at night and look up into the sky, and you will see lots of stars. But because of the interference of other lights in the metro area, you won’t see nearly as many stars as someone in the countryside would see.  

For scientists who have been studying stars for years – even decades – the analogous situation for finding planets around those stars is more dire. For millennia, there was widespread doubt ...

Read the entire article...