All...

see news from the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia for 06/16/2008
http://exoplanet.eu/

No other details except for the star and planet parameters...

The Extra Solar Super Earths conference is under away in Nantes this week (06/16/2008).
http://www.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/geol/SuperEarths2008/

I am sure we will hear more.....

Stay tuned... what a time...

Craig

Greg Laughlin is posting comments from the Nantes Super Earth conference ...

http://www.oklo.org/

Stay tuned...

Craig

I am very cautious and sceptical reading news about new discovered planets. I have not full confidence in these data, especially I have not full confidence in data interpretation.

Peter59...

I was skeptical too until the first transiting planet convinced me to have some confidance in Radial Velocity
measurements...

What ever is happening at least gives us places to point better instrumentation over time.

Craig

More details on three of the planets....

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1926

Understand that seeing is believing.... a transiting Super Earth with a mass measurement by RV would be best.
Or vice versa....

What a glory it is that we can look up at the night sky and point to stars attended with worlds...

Craig

This ESO release suggests that 1-in-3 Sun-like stars have such super-Earths, so there are a lot more to come.

Exciting times indeed.

So -- are we seeing all these super-tight-orbit planets (less than 10 days for a complete orbit) simply because they're easier to spot? Or are the vast majority of planets out there (rocky or otherwise) in super-tight orbits?

Might be difficult to find life, much less civilizations, on planets so close to their primaries that their atmospheres are composed of heavy metal vapors...

-the other Doug

The first Jupiter mass planets planets discovered were very close because those were easiest to find. Later more distant examples were found once enough observations were made, I expect the same will be the case with the super earths.

Looking at some of belleraphon1's links I came across a tool that allows you to generate your own plots of the statistics of extrasolar planets. The Jupiter mass planets have an interesting bimodal distribution.

Click to view attachment
http://exoplanet.eu/catalog-RV.php?mdAff=diag#tc

From the press release, they are contending that 1 out of 3 F, G, and K stars have a planet in the "super-Earth" to Neptune range with orbital periods of less than 50 days. So, they have discovered these ones because they are easier, but they are asserting that they are quite abundant in the galaxy. Perhaps for M-stars with that sort of orbital distance we'd have a chance for habitable planets but not FGKs.

Couldn't that be an artifact of the detection methods? I mean, what it seems to tell me is that we find it easiest to detect large planets that are either close in or far out from their star, but not smaller planets or large planets at a medium distance from the star.

All....

There is definite bias in each of the detection methods now used. The RV and Transit methods are biased towards close in and higher mass planets (close in, heavier, and bigger is easier to find).

For those who want to dig deeper I find the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopeidia links are a great resource.
The Bibliography list is a treasure trove on this subject and the database is great:

Link http://exoplanet.eu/

And the Systemic site at http://www.oklo.org/ is a great source of news and data.

For a look at the USA and ESA plans for ultimately finding and characterizing "Earth-like" planets see these
reports..

NSF Working Group
http://www.nsf.gov/mps/ast/aaac/exoplanet_...inal_report.pdf (25MB)

ESA - DARWIN
http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/0805.1873 (2.3MB)

In 15 years .... will we detect the glint of strange oceans on worlds now unknown to us? What a prospect.

Craig