Quote:
Originally posted by John L@Sep 9 2004, 08:35 PM
The problem is that we can't rely on the results of our current searches to rule out any star. Whether we've found no planets or ten, there could still be happy little Earths around any of them that we'll have to hunt patiently for to finally discover.
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Actually we can. Stars that have large planets in highly eccentric orbits that go through the habitable zone are out. Under those conditions there are no stable orbits in the habitable zone for a smaller planet to occupy.
The interesting thing is that many of the planets we are discovering are like that, which makes our solar system start to look special. But, as you point out, that's just a sampling bias. With our current methods, we could look at the sun from 10 light years away, and we'd be unable to detect any planets at all, even Jupiter (it's too far out). So maybe all those stars that look like they don't have planets have solar systems just like ours, and it's only the weird systems that we're currently seeing.