According to NASA calculations gleaned from their findings using the Kepler telescope there could be as many as 2 billion earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy, and some of them might be quite close but our technology isn’t quite able to detect them yet.
The Nasa report also announced the discovery of another 1,094 planets.
The statistics suggest that using our current understanding of the goldilocks zone around a g-type star that 1.4% of sun-like stars should have a rocky planet like earth. However the goldilocks zone is being revised in light of new physics, and with revised zone boundaries, as many as 2.7% of sun-like stars might have an Earth twin.
That’s very exciting news because with 2 billion planets, the probability of finding life elsewhere starts to look better. Don’t forget that’s only in our Milky Way Galaxy, but in our local neighbourhood there are around 35 galaxies, with two that are similar sized to the Milky Way.
The distances between us and the other planets are still way beyond our ability to reach them either by space travel or communication, but it’s an exciting time to be making exoplanet discoveries.
