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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But how many factors are they really taking into account? In addition to being at a good distance from the sun, good size, good rotation speed, good chemical composition, and good temperature earth has going for, there are also things like how the moon stabilizes the environment, and Jupiter deters comets and asteroids away from earth. There's probably a few hundred I can name, but you get the idea. Sure, you could say that life works the way it does because of those conditions, but the point is we don't actually have evidence of it being able to work any other way. Not that I wouldn't like the idea of a universe filled with life.