Which leads to the next question, which is what is the ultimate goal of Kepler?
Fanson: With Kepler we’re trying to answer the question, “How frequently do planets like earth, that is planets the size of the Earth and orbiting in the habitable zone, how frequently do planets like that form around stars in our galaxy?” As you said, we know of about 350 planets now orbiting other stars, but finding planets the size of the Earth in the habitable zone is just an extremely difficult measurement to make. And that’s what’s driving us into space, trying to make this measurement above the Earth’s atmosphere, where you can get much higher precision. Interviewer: Tell us a little bit about the technique that Kepler’s using to look for Earthlike planets. Fanson: Kepler is going to use a somewhat different technique from the method that’s been used to find the bulk of the planets so far. We’re going to use a technique called transits. And a transit is an easy thing to understand. It’s simply a planet orbiting a star, passing in front of the star as seen from our point of view.
