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Oct 30, 2026 7 min

Why Finding Earth-Sized Planets is Hard

from Cool Worlds Hosted by Cool Worlds

The transit method of finding exoplanets is easier for big planets than small planets. But new work from the Cool Worlds Lab shows that transits disfavor the detection of small, Earth-sized planets even more than previously realized. Emily Sandford, a third-year graduate student with the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia, explains our new paper which derives these biases, allowing astronomers to correct for these effects when figuring out how many Earths there really are.::More about this Video::► Kipping & Sandford (2016), "Observational biases for transiting planets": http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.05662► Outro music by Taylor Davis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl9kI1yQKZk::Playlists For Channel::Latest Cool Worlds Videos ► http://bit.ly/NewCoolWorldsCool Worlds Research ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsResearchGuest Videos ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsGuestsQ&A Videos ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsQAScience of TV/Film ► http://bit.ly/ScienceMovies::Follow us::SUBSCRIBE to the channel http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsSubscribeCool Worlds Lab http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.eduTwitter https://twitter.com/david_kippingInstagram https://www.instagram.com/cool.worldsTHANKS FOR WATCHING!!

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Why Finding Earth-Sized Planets is Hard

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