Astronomers estimate that there are 6 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone.
Perhaps you believe that one Earth is sufficient. But what if the number was in the billion s? According to new research, the number of Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy could approach 6 billion. Astronomers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) examined data from NASA’s Kepler project and came to a startling conclusion. From 2009 to 2018, the Kepler planet-hunting satellite collected data on 200,000 stars. The scientists’ criterion for picking such a planet included that it had to be rocky, around the same size as Earth, and orbiting a star like our Sun. This planet had to be in the habitable zone of its star, where the conditions would be ideal for the presence of water and life. Michelle Kunimoto, a UBC researcher who previously identified 17 new planet s (“exo planet s”) outside our Solar System, stated that their calculations “set an upper limit of 0.18 Earth-like planet s per G-type star.” In other words, there are ap...