Search for Class M Planets Hitting the Tipping Point?

It’s still sometimes amazing for me to think that we’ve discovered over 300 planets in the last 25 years — however the start of the search for extra terrestrials won’t be really believable until we find some planets that look like Earth instead of Jupiter. According to this article we may not be closer to find planets exactly the size of Earth, but we may be getting closer to finding more rocky planets which are about five times the size of our home:

New Technologies Accelerate Search for Earth-Like Planets to Tipping Point

“A great new age of the discovery of Earth-like planets has reached the tipping point, according to Harvard Professor of Astronomy Dimitar Sasselov, who heads the Origins of Life Initiative said after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) symposium held this May . “We can say this is the moment where we started the exploration of planets like Earth.” The symposium’s focus was “Transiting Planets,” or the technique of discovering planets by measuring changes in the light of distant suns when a planet passes in front of them.”