At least 500 million of those planets are in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold zone where life could exist. The numbers were extrapolated from the early results of NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope.
Kepler science chief William Borucki says scientists took the number of planets they found in the first year of searching a small part of the night sky and then made an estimate on how likely stars are to have planets. Kepler spots planets as they pass between Earth and the star it orbits.
3 comments:
Life is inevitable. Wouldn't it be good if we could just signal someone else in our bit of space....
And hope they aren't giant Arthropods with no moral centre and a taste for meat :-)
I always love the "why haven't the aliens visited us" questions.
I do believe there is other life out there somewhere but why would they come in our direction, if they have the intelligence to even think about that in the first place, and given the distances involved FTL may not actually be possible no matter how long you've been trying to figure it out.
So many worlds and at such great distances, we may forever be alone.
Certainly in our lifetimes.
dear mrs and mr aliens,
may we come to your planet and do the things we do so well going into other peoples places? we wont break anything really, we just want to bring some really hefty devices that are not to be used (in warfare) as we take in the sights.
BTW we all have AIDS, and if we dont, we possibly have some strontium poisoning that was recklessly used to keep Russians out of a destroyed Japan (i know, but we can be silly sometimes when tossing big things around) so dont think aobut eating us lower life forms anytime soon. thanks.
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