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Q&A

Why didn't we detect that exoplanet before?

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In my world an alien creature claims to be from an earth-like planet orbiting a 500 light-years away solar analog star. It tells us that the planet has x mass, y diameter, z orbital period, that specific atmospheric composition etc etc.

We're in the second half of 2020s so there are all of the future space telescopes (TESS, CHEOPS, JWST, PLATO and WFIRST). Obviously, we want to verify the creature's claim and we realize that we haven't discovered that planet yet.

Bearing in mind that the creature isn't lying and that we could detect that planet through the transit method (since we need to verify the atmospheric composition - thanks Mike Scott), would it be so unlikely to not have detected it before? If not, why?

(I can adjust the planet characteristics to make it plausible)

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/99359. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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