Ping.
Sad that that Kepler bit the dust. All of these worlds just from one tiny part of the sky!
It is interesting how a lot of these exoplanets are in very tight orbits around their star. Maybe our instruments are biased to short orbits and we will find some longer orbits over time, but still, a lot of these planets orbit in only a few hours or days.
Is it the astronomers, desiring continued (or increased) funding, or is it funding administrators, lacking in scientific knowledge, but eager to justify their jobs, or is it journalists, dreaming of being part of the fifth-column mainstream media, who are responsible for the “Earth-like” hype of yet another exoplanet, which for one reason or another, as usually mentioned at the end of the article after the hype, cannot support any biological life as we know or conceive it?