Earth like planets outside the Solar System

I understand that up to now there have been approximately a total of
100 planets that have detected orbiting stars other than our Sun.
Does anyone know at this stage of research how many are Earth like and
therefore would possibly harbour life?

Any information in this area would be most welcome.

"WMcG" wrote in message
m...
I understand that up to now there have been approximately a total of
100 planets that have detected orbiting stars other than our Sun.
Does anyone know at this stage of research how many are Earth like and
therefore would possibly harbour life?

Any information in this area would be most welcome.

Go to:
http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/encycl.html

to learn more about the extrasolar planets detected to date (~110 so far).

All the planets (well almost all the planets) so far have Saturn mass or
larger, so they are not Earth like.

It is very difficult to detect Earth sized planets (to say nothing of Earth
like planets!!) at this time. In the future though there are projects
planned
(like NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder mission and others) that will be
able to do the job ...
Al

"WMcG" wrote in message
m...
I understand that up to now there have been approximately a total of
100 planets that have detected orbiting stars other than our Sun.
Does anyone know at this stage of research how many are Earth like and
therefore would possibly harbour life?

Any information in this area would be most welcome.

Go to:
http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/encycl.html

to learn more about the extrasolar planets detected to date (~110 so far).

All the planets (well almost all the planets) so far have Saturn mass or
larger, so they are not Earth like.

It is very difficult to detect Earth sized planets (to say nothing of Earth
like planets!!) at this time. In the future though there are projects
planned
(like NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder mission and others) that will be
able to do the job ...
Al