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Originally Posted by Krovikan
What are they using to arrive at the 29% number, just the asteroid belt? Or are they including Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects? Also, how are they estimating the unknown?
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I would guess they are looking at how much and how often they have looked at the sky, then using simple math to say we've probably missed x % in this time. Then using standard deviation to estimate how many have such a massive orbit that they have not passed out orbit in the modern era.
There certainly are well established models for predict totals based on a partial sample.