Planets in the Milky Way: 160 billion?!

[entropy13]

A statistical analysis based on a survey of millions of stars suggests that there's at least one planet for every star in the sky, and probably more. That would add up to 160 billion planets or so in the Milky Way.

"We conclude that stars are orbited by planets as a rule, rather than the exception," an international research team reports today in the journal Nature.

The estimate may sound amazing: Just a year ago, the world was wowed by the claim that at least half of the 100 billion or more stars in the Milky Way possessed planets, yielding a figure of 50 billion planets. The latest survey now suggests that there's an average of 1.6 planets per star system, which would work out to 160 billion. But perhaps the most amazing thing about the findings is ... astronomers don't find them amazing at all.

"I am not surprised by the numbers," Didier Queloz, a planet-hunter at the Geneva Observatory who was not involved in the survey, told me in an email. Back in 2008, Queloz was part of a different research team that concluded one-third of the stars like our sun harbored super-Earth-size planets — the kinds of planets that could support life.

Over the past couple of years, findings from a variety of planet-hunting missions — including NASA's Kepler space telescope, the European Space Agency's COROT telescope and ground-based telescope surveys — have reinforced the view that planets are plentiful.

"Results from the three main techniques of planet detection are rapidly converging to a common result: Not only are planets common in the galaxy, but there are more small planets than large ones," Caltech astronomer Stephen Kane, a member of the team behind the findings reported in Nature, said in a news release from the Space Telescope Science Institute. "This is encouraging news for investigations into habitable planets."


Full article here.

[trickson]

Time to build space ships so we can colonize them now .

[ShiBDiB]

How is this new? Am I the only one who figured every star was basically a solar system.

[WhiteLotus]

Yup, that is plausible.

[entropy13]

Originally Posted by ShiBDiB

How is this new? Am I the only one who figured every star was basically a solar system.

Here we go again.

Originally Posted by ShiBDiB

How is this new?

"This", meaning the 160 billion estimate, is new, because before the release of such a figure, estimates are only almost 1/3 of that.

Originally Posted by ShiBDiB

Am I the only one who figured every star was basically a solar system.

Obviously not, since there have been estimates prior to this already.




Thus, I'm not really sure what your point is with your post.

[Drone]

http://galaxy.phy.cmich.edu/~axel/mwpan2/krpano/

Awesome map of Milky Way

[bostonbuddy]

We really need to start building our empire, better to rule then to serve.

[LAN_deRf_HA]

What percentage of those are earth-like and in the habitable zone? I think I've seen estimates for both those numbers but not together.

[scaminatrix]

http://dingo.care2.com/cards/flash/5409/galaxy.swf

[Super XP]

The only issue with all this pace stuff is NASA. They've been hiding very important information from the people. NASA would have had a 50 to 75 man spaceship with an onboard AI that would auto create and regulate gravity. This ship in space would be capable of speeds of upto 25,000 to 50,000 Km/sec and would have had the ability for deep space travel.

They would have had the ability to travel to Mars in a matter of 1 to 2 months and reach the edge of our Solar System in less than 10 months to a year.

NASA is the issue.

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by LAN_deRf_HA

What percentage of those are earth-like and in the habitable zone? I think I've seen estimates for both those numbers but not together.

grab the latest bbc sky at night episode. good info there