Evidence of more Earth-sized Planets

Current techniques for detecting exoplanets may be missing about half of the Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. The problem is that almost half of all stars are binary systems (which are two stars orbiting each other). Searching these binary systems for exoplanets can be difficult because of the glare of their companion stars. This is a definite problem for optical telescopes. Even NASA’s TESS exoplanet-hunting space telescope which detects exoplanets by changes in the light received from a star when a planet passes in front of it is also susceptible. As a planet transits the star it’s orbiting, light from the second star makes it much more difficult for TESS to detect it.

For more information, there is an excellent article recently published on phys.org: Astronomers uncover evidence that there could be many more Earth-sized planets than previously thought