Dr. William Borucki, the force behind the Kepler exo-planet finding observatory, gave an update last night on the John Batchelor radio program: John Batchelor Hotel Mars, Wednesday, 2-4-15 – Thespaceshow’s Blog –

David Livingston, who co-hosts the weekly Hotel Mars segment on the John Batchelor show, gave this summary of the show:

John Batchelor and I welcomed Dr. William (Bill) Borucki back to the show to discuss the recently announced discovery of the small five planet system 11.2 billion years old, Kepler-444. This is approximately 2.5 times older than the Earth. We discussed the exoplanet search, rocky planets and their early formation, the surprises contained within the discovery of Kepler-444, and life detection in the habitable zone. As it turns out, the five small planets orbit their sun in 10 days so they are far too hot for life. However, Dr. Borucki did at one point during our discussion estimate the number of planetary candidates that were possible in the habitable zone. One can see Kepler-444 with binoculars so I asked our guest where to look to find it. He also said it was a triple star system! Among the surprises included the discover of dust and metal that early and the discovery that stars formed so very early at all.