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Old 27-May-2008, 02:09 PM
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George George is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2003
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I read it as the 30% includes two planetary populations: SuperEarths and hot Neptunes. They say...

"The notion that 30 percent of all sunlike stars have close-in superEarths or superNeptunes is “really remarkable."

The 45 only applies to the number of SuperEarths of the 400 stars in the study.

When you add the additional 10% for the third Jupiter class of planets to the 30% for the other two, we get 40% for all three classes. Thus, 40% of all sun-like stars have planets. I assume this percentage will be higher once the Earth-sized planets are detectable. Perhaps more than half of the F, G, and K class stars will be discovered to have planets.

The articles are little unclear of these numbers, admittedly. But I think I'm right. It would have been nicer to break it down as follows:

Of the 400 sun-like stars, at least...

11% have SuperEarths planets
19% have Neptune class planets
10% have Jupiter class planets
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