Sunday, December 11, 2011

Milky Way May Have 2 Billion Earthlike Planets


Based on what Kepler's found so far, our Milky Way galaxy may be home to at least two billion Earthlike planets. Based on data from the Kepler space telescope, Dimitar Sasselov -- Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics concludes in a study that up to 2.7 percent of all suns, that resemble our own Sol, in the Milky Way may have "earthlike" planets. Kepler has confirmed 45 new planets and found an additional 1,235 planet candidates.

From the Daily Galaxy Article:
  • "There are about a hundred billion sunlike stars within the Milky Way," said Joe Catanzarite, a scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Two percent of those might have Earth analogs, so you have two billion Earth analog planets in the galaxy," he added.

Read complete Daily Galaxy article here




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