http://discovermagazine.com/2009/may/07-inspiring-boom-in-super-earths
Super-Earths are defined as dense, rocky worlds bigger than Earth that lack the tremendous atmosphere of gas giants. So far, astronomers have discovered 20 of them. It's quite likely that the Kepler spacecraft will detect a lot more. A more recent article has already put that number at 45.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2008/06/16/a-trio-of-super-earths-sur/
According to the second article, super-Earths are "4.2 - 9.4 times as heavy." I'm guessing that they mean "massive."
So how can all this be incorporated into Traveller? And could it ever be officially incorporated into the World Generation Rules?
World sizes run from 0 to 10,000 miles in diameter as a result of the 2D6 - 2 rule, with 5,000 being the most common result on the bell curve. If the -2 is dropped, we'll get a world range of 2,000 - 12,000 miles with 7,000 being the most common. But even if we get 12,000 mile diameter worlds rolled up, that barely gets us into the super-Earth mass range listed above.
And by Traveller World Generation Rules, there will be a greater proportion of atmospheres of A and higher. I don't know if reality will bear that out.
I'd like to know what others think about this and hopefully EDG will weigh in as well. In fact, he probably already has a revised world generation sequence to take this into account. :)
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DED