NASA discovers 715 new planets, including four that could host life

Old news?

or another 700 planets

ok, seems to be a new discovery

> Astronomers have announced that 715 new planets have been discovered outside the Earth’s solar system, including four planets that are more than double the size of our own. This discovery boosts the number of known planets in our galaxy to over 1,700.

I’ve fond some new “planet candidates” myself using the Kepler data.

> The newly discovered planets were all found in multi-planet systems and most are relatively small. Scientists found planets – all of which orbit 305 stars, making up what are known as planetary systems

So, not mine, mine were all large and in long duration orbits.

> The announcement Tuesday covered only the first two years of Kepler’s study

That makes it 3 years and 11 months out of date. I take it that this means that pre-discovered Kepler planet candidates have been verified – how?

(From another news article) “The Kepler space telescope observes some 150,000 stars, more than 3600 of which are presumed had planetary candidates. Until now, 961 of Kepler’s planet candidates had been confirmed.”

So that’s 715 + 961 = 1676 Kepler planet candidates confirmed.
If “the number of known planets in our galaxy to over 1,700” then that leaves only a few more than 24 from non-Kepler sources, which is totally wrong. The numbers don’t add up. See if I can figure this out.

On 22 Feb 2014, there were 1081 planets according to the Extrasolar Planet Encyclopedia, of which about 300 were previously-confirmed Kepler planets, not 961 !

By the way, the methods normally used to find these planets are unable to tell if the orbits are circular or elliptical – my own calculations from Kepler data suggest that most are in highly elliptic orbits. This may already have been checked in the verification of Kepler planets, but without additional information I have to say that I doubt it.

Have any of our religions claimed exclusive rights to any of them?