Scientists working with NASA's Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft have made a preliminary estimate of the number of planets in the Milky Way galaxy. They put the number at 50 billion, with 500 million possible Earth-like worlds.
That comes out to roughly every other star in the galaxy having one planet. That's obviously not literally the case. The Sun, for example, has eight planets (at least), and we already have evidence of other planetary systems, so in fact planets probably exist around certain types of stars and not around other types.
Still, those numbers suggest life could be common in the galaxy, and that those few species that master interstellar travel would have lots of places to visit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment