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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[quote]We're not special snowflakes. [/quote] Snow is amazing. Especially when one sees it for the very first time. On both the macro and micro level it is impressive. Millions upon millions of flakes, each crystallized on its own and no two are identical. A sky full of such things, each unique, but all similar, each part of a swarming, swirling and falling cascade of a snapshot in the nearly infinite existence of billions of molecules that have existed for a very, very long time and that have been snow and snowflakes before, and will be different snowflakes countless times again. You can say that an individual snowflake isn't special and I can understand and accept that as your view. But to me? Each one of them, every pile, every time I see snow, I am struck with wonder and awe.