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In a new blind survey of gravitational microlensing, an international team of astronomers has detected likely evidence for four Earth-sized planets wandering freely through interstellar space. Using observations from the aging Kepler Space Telescope , researchers led by Iain McDonald at the University of Manchester picked out key signs of microlensing by the planets in a crowded and noisy field of stars. Their success in the face of challenging circumstances clearly demonstrates the feasibility of blind, space-based microlensing surveys in future missions. In some star systems, astronomers predict that the strong gravitational tug of large planets could have thrown their smaller planetary neighbours out into interstellar space. Without any host star, these roughly Earth-sized “free-floating planets” (FFPs) would be virtually impossible to detect using conventional exoplanet searching techniques – but should be detectable through the effect of gravitational mi...
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