Hacker News Reader

2. Simulated what the detector would have reported for each.

I think this would be really hard. For example, you need to simulate how the detector responds to different planet compositions, different signal to noise ratios at different distances from the star. A sphere in vacuum model may be a gross simplification.

View on HN

Well, we already deduce exoplanets' masses, orbits, diameters, and so on from the sensor data that basically amounts to a tiny change in the light curve of the star. The astronomers are probably pretty well aware of the limitations of their models and potential confounders.

How would the composition of a planet affect how much light it blocked of its star when passing in front? And signal to noise ratios are presumably quite easy to simulate. So not really sure what's so hard about it.

Composition determines density. A rocky planet would block less light than a gas giant planet of the same mass, because it would be denser and therefore smaller.

But does density have to do with anything Kepler measures?

Since it only measures how much light decreases, I assumed it's only measuring planet size, and that we're totally ignorant about planet mass and density?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com