Study says 17 billion+ ‘earths’ exist in galaxy
01/08/2013
Ask the average person how many planets exist and many will reply “eight” or “nine,” depending on how favorably they view Pluto. A few may even toss out “10,” signifying a belief that “Planet X,” the mysterious undiscovered body believed for decades to lurk beyond Pluto, still remains undetected.
And while a few may note the existence of planets in other solar systems, it’s improbable anyone will guess billions, or even more unlikely, hundreds of billions.
But that’s what astronomers using NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have found after studying reports sent back from the observatory. The Milky Way alone contains at least 17 billion planets the size of Earth, and likely many more, researchers now believe.
About 17 percent of the 100 million stars in our galaxy have a planet about the size of Earth in a close orbit, according to astronomers, Agence France-Presse reported.
The lead author of the study estimated that there are at least 100 billion planets in total in the Milky Way.
“It’s a staggering number, if you think about it,” Jonathan Swift, a postdoctoral student at the California Institute of Technology, said in a statement. “Basically there’s one of these planets per star.”
The report does not mean that all those planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, could be inhabitable, but it increases the chances of finding planets similar to Earth, according to the wire service.
The Kepler space observatory, launched in 2009, is “specifically designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets,” according to NASA.
The Kepler craft was able to detect possible exoplanets when they passed in front of their star, creating a mini-eclipse that dimmed the star slightly.
The researchers presented the analysis Monday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif.
(Above: The Milky Way, seen along with the La Silla Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile.)
01/08/2013 at 10:09 am
Seventeen billion Earths out there, and we’re the ones with the Kardashians. Sheesh.
01/08/2013 at 10:29 am
Ha! But what if every planet has their own version of the Kardashians? And what if there is a planet made of solely of Kardashian-like beings? If the latter were the case, at least we wouldn’t have to worry about them developing the technology to come bother us, right?
01/08/2013 at 2:27 pm
What wonderful news! Now we have 17 billion new Earths to colonize when we have finally destroyed the one we’ve been living in.
01/08/2013 at 4:41 pm
Yes, that’s 2.5 for every person on Earth right now. Hopefully at least one of the ones I get won’t have roaches or mosquitoes.