I'm entering this question right after LHS 1140 b has been added to the list. The problem is that such a world was discovered back in 2017 and has just now been declared potentially habitable.
The implications are the following:
It does not make much sense to determine a base rate for this question by looking at the year in which each planet in the list was first discovered
The discovery rate of new exoplanets has nothing to do with the rate at which they are declared potentially habitable, so the number and quality of telescopes and space missions that are tasked with finding new worlds should not affect the outcome of this question
The rate at which new planets are added to the list depends on how much time is spent analyzing them to gain a better overview of their characteristics
My conclusion is that the most effective interpretation of the base rate for this question is as follows. 68 planets have been added to the list in the past 11 years, on average 6.2 per year or 5.2 in any period of 10 months. 1 planet has already been added to the list, so the chance that at least 4 more will be added in the remaining time is 76% by using the Poisson distribution.
Any deviation from this base rate would be highly speculative. Even if more effort is being put into determining which exoplanets are potentially inhabitable, one could argue that the best candidates have already been identified early. As a result, it's not immediate to argue about the increased or decreased likelihood of the addition of new worlds to the list.
It would be much better to have data about when each planet has been added to the list. This information is not available on the website, but I'm pretty confident it could be easily provided by the PHL. I will try to ask directly to them.
@404_NOT_FOUND good suggestion about contacting the team behind the catalog. @cmeinel and I used that in the past, and I was thinking about doing the same thing here, but it would be best to brainstorm and prioritize our questions first, because we might have one chance for getting their reply. I recently read a good advice about how to contact experts in Shane Parrish "Clear Thinking" book. If we want them to respond we should have a well-written and well-thought email, showing that we have already took time to gather information we can ourselves and that our questions are smart based on what we have already learned. I am also tagging @ctsats here.
One correction to your rationale "I'm entering this question right after LHS 1140 b has been added to the list.", you are likely referring to this comment on the website:
But last update added only one potentially habitable exoplanet and it was TOI-904 c (article announcing its discovery was published in December 2023). I see LHS 1140 b already in my previous data file. You can check it by looking at https://phl.upr.edu/hwc/data in the Archive.org's WayBack Machine.
I think that the update meant that there is new information about LHS 1140 b exoplanet which was already on the list - and I guess that information is that it is a water world.
I am now in the process of rewriting my yesterday's rationale - it is very poorly written and chaotic, but I think I found some interesting information by getting to the previous website of this project in the WayBack Machine and getting some partial information about at what time they had updates and how many planets were on the list. What is important, I was wrong about the order of exoplanets in the csv file and wrong with the assumption that addition to the list of potentially habitable exoplanets would cause a change in P_UPDATE column in the csv.
Thanks for pointing this out. The wording on their homepage is somewhat confusing, so since I did not look at the initial dataset, I assumed LHS was the new one.
I'm going to spend some more time on this question soon.
@404_NOT_FOUND@michal_dubrawski Just FYI and FWIW, I have sent them an email since March 5 with some clarification requests, but I have yet to receive any reply...
I'm entering this question right after LHS 1140 b has been added to the list. The problem is that such a world was discovered back in 2017 and has just now been declared potentially habitable.
The implications are the following:
My conclusion is that the most effective interpretation of the base rate for this question is as follows. 68 planets have been added to the list in the past 11 years, on average 6.2 per year or 5.2 in any period of 10 months. 1 planet has already been added to the list, so the chance that at least 4 more will be added in the remaining time is 76% by using the Poisson distribution.
Any deviation from this base rate would be highly speculative. Even if more effort is being put into determining which exoplanets are potentially inhabitable, one could argue that the best candidates have already been identified early. As a result, it's not immediate to argue about the increased or decreased likelihood of the addition of new worlds to the list.
It would be much better to have data about when each planet has been added to the list. This information is not available on the website, but I'm pretty confident it could be easily provided by the PHL. I will try to ask directly to them.
@404_NOT_FOUND good suggestion about contacting the team behind the catalog. @cmeinel and I used that in the past, and I was thinking about doing the same thing here, but it would be best to brainstorm and prioritize our questions first, because we might have one chance for getting their reply. I recently read a good advice about how to contact experts in Shane Parrish "Clear Thinking" book. If we want them to respond we should have a well-written and well-thought email, showing that we have already took time to gather information we can ourselves and that our questions are smart based on what we have already learned. I am also tagging @ctsats here.
One correction to your rationale "I'm entering this question right after LHS 1140 b has been added to the list.", you are likely referring to this comment on the website:
But last update added only one potentially habitable exoplanet and it was TOI-904 c (article announcing its discovery was published in December 2023). I see LHS 1140 b already in my previous data file. You can check it by looking at https://phl.upr.edu/hwc/data in the Archive.org's WayBack Machine.
I think that the update meant that there is new information about LHS 1140 b exoplanet which was already on the list - and I guess that information is that it is a water world.
I am now in the process of rewriting my yesterday's rationale - it is very poorly written and chaotic, but I think I found some interesting information by getting to the previous website of this project in the WayBack Machine and getting some partial information about at what time they had updates and how many planets were on the list. What is important, I was wrong about the order of exoplanets in the csv file and wrong with the assumption that addition to the list of potentially habitable exoplanets would cause a change in P_UPDATE column in the csv.
Thanks for pointing this out. The wording on their homepage is somewhat confusing, so since I did not look at the initial dataset, I assumed LHS was the new one.
I'm going to spend some more time on this question soon.
@404_NOT_FOUND @michal_dubrawski Just FYI and FWIW, I have sent them an email since March 5 with some clarification requests, but I have yet to receive any reply...
Well, he just replied: https://www.infer-pub.com/comments/125708 😉