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takyon writes:

Over half of the gas giant "exoplanets" spotted by the Kepler telescope may actually be explained by other astrophysical phenomena [outerplaces.com], such as binary stars and brown dwarf stars:

It's always exciting when Kepler discovers a new exoplanet, and it's generally assumed that there is a relatively low chance of a false positive. But according to a new study, there may be a much higher rate of false positives than we thought with regard to gas giants, possibly up to 55%.

In the study, astronomers from Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço examined a sample of 129 gas planets detected by Kepler through the transit method. The transit method involves extrapolating the existence of a planet from the periodic dimming of a star's light emission that is presumably caused by an exoplanet's orbit. They found that approximately half of them weren't planets at all; rather, the light's dimming was caused by some other astrophysical phenomenon.

Gas giants are particularly vulnerable to false positives, as they can easily be imitated by eclipsing binaries. Eclipsing binaries are binary star systems aligned with the observer's (in this case, Kepler's) line of sight, which causes the larger star to block the light from the smaller. The researchers found that 52.3% of the gas giants were actually eclipsing binaries, while 2.3% were brown dwarfs, or a "failed star" between gas giants that doesn't have enough mass to fuse hydrogen to its core.

Also at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences [iastro.pt].

SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates XVII. The physical properties of giant exoplanets within 400 days of period [arxiv.org]

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