SPACEGASM: The MILKY WAY may have 20 BILLION EARTH-SIZED PLANETS.
Kepler is always doing work! On its galactic grind. Crunching numbers. The latest calculations bound to blow out your space-bunghole is the finding that one out of every five sunlike stars has a planet the size of Earth.
The known odds of something — or someone — living far, far beyond the Earth increased astronomers’ boldest dreams dramatically on Monday.
Astronomers reported that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable Earth-size planets in the galaxy, based on a new analysis of data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.
One out of every five sunlike stars in the galaxy has a planet the size of Earth circling it in the Goldilocks zone — not too hot, not too cold — where surface temperatures should be compatible with liquid water, according to a herculean three-year calculation based on data from the Kepler spacecraft by Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.
Mr. Petigura’s analysis represents a major step toward the main goal of the Kepler mission, which was to measure what fraction of sunlike stars in the galaxy have Earth-size planets. Sometimes called eta-Earth, it is an important factor in the so-called Drake equation used to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe. Mr. Petigura’s paper, published Monday in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Science, puts another smiley face on a cosmos that has gotten increasingly friendly and fecund-looking over the last 20 years.
“It seems that the universe produces plentiful real estate for life that somehow resembles life on Earth,” Mr. Petigura said.
[NYT]
What does this mean? I don’t know man, I ain’t a thinker. But I am! a fan of science-fiction. So I’m taking this to mean in like, uh, nineteen years I’m going to be on Earth-2, drinking space-suds and plowing omnisexual galactic bro-babes. Let me dream.