Matteo Cantiello edited Intro.tex  about 10 years ago

Commit id: 5468d80997755a185eb6f7e4de02ca4072de3ef1

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As today\footnote{6 February 2014, check \href{http://exoplanets.org/}{exoplanets.org} for the most recent figure} 765 confirmed exoplanets and 3466 exoplanet candidates are known. The most remarkable discoveries came only in the last couple of years thanks to the \href{http://kepler.nasa.gov/}{KEPLER} space telescope. This amazing instrument has been patiently looking for the extremely tiny dimming induced by the passage of a planet in front of its host star, and helped to answer two fundamental questions:  \begin{itemize}  \item How common are planets?  \item How common are planets similar to the Earth (Earth-like exoplanets)? (habitable planets)?  \end{itemize}