In the last several years, technical progress in human forensics – genetic, spectrographic, chemical, analytical – has spilled over into wildlife and plant forensics and research.

That is far too small to be resolved by any telescopes on Earth, but spectrographic observations suggest there are two things there, the researchers say.

Her group combined data from Kepler, which measures the sizes of planets, with spectrographic observations from an Italian telescope in the Canary Islands.