American and Canadian astronomers have questioned the existence of the very Earth-like planet Kepler 452 b, which the Kepler Space Telescope discovered in 2015. The authors substantiated their doubts in an article posted on the ArXiv.org preprint site.
The found planet interested astronomers in that it is very similar to Earth: slightly larger and slightly heavier, and revolves around a star similar in characteristics to the Sun with a period of 385 days. However, it is difficult to observe such small objects at a distance of about a thousand light years due to the imperfection of the telescope. Most often, planets are noticed during transits, when they pass between the Earth and their star, and obscure the latter. To confirm that it is a planet, the transit must be observed at least three times. Due to the long orbital period, Kepler 452 b barely managed to accumulate the required amount before the Kepler telescope failed.
The authors of the article analyzed the probability of error for each Kepler instrument and determined in which cases the telescope can give inaccurate data. They looked at more than 100 thousand stars and noticed that planets with a short orbital period are more easily confirmed even before official recognition, for planets with a longer year this is not so easy.
Scientists have framed the known data about the planet Kepler 452 b through the models they created, showing the possibility of error. As a result, it turned out that the probability that it is indeed a planet is from 16% to 92%. Kepler 452 b is too small and far away to be verified by other methods. Perhaps the existence of the planet will be confirmed by the Hubble telescope, which will be able to observe its next transit.