There is potentially over 8 [b]billion[/b] planets capable of life in [b][i]our galaxy.[/i][/b]
[quote] By extrapolating Kepler’s findings, astronomers have come up with some not-altogether-unfounded estimates for these values. For instance, they concluded that about 22% of Sun-like stars has at least one planet we class as potentially habitable. Doing the math based on the latest estimates for the total number of stars in the Milky Way, that gives us a rough figure of 8.8 billion potentially habitable planets in the Milky Way. That’s a lot of rolls of the dice, assuming you believe life has any chance at all of starting spontaneously. [/quote]
That's just our galaxy people. There's hundreds of billions of galaxies in our universe. That's a lot of potential for life. We're not special snowflakes.
[url=http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170404-kepler-20-of-sun-like-stars-have-habitable-planets-alien-life-drake-equation-finally-has-a-leg-to-stand-on]source[/url]
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Edited by Progo: 4/22/2015 2:31:30 PMDo these findings account for mass, atmosphere, and magnetic field? Or is it just any planet that falls within the optimum distance from a star? I'm excited by the prospect of habitable planets, and alien life, but it's always good to be critical of numbers like this.