Kepler telescope: Earth-size planets 'number 17bn'

[Judi Lynn]

8 January 2013 Last updated at 02:16 ET
Kepler telescope: Earth-size planets 'number 17bn'
By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News, California

Astronomers say that one in six stars hosts an Earth-sized planet in a close orbit - suggesting a total of 17 billion such planets in the galaxy.

The result comes from an analysis of planet candidates gathered by the Kepler telescope.

The Kepler team also announced 461 new planet candidates, bringing the satellites' total haul to 2,740.

The findings were announced at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California.

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20942440

[MAD Dave]

1. Awesome News

The sheer number of earth sized planets in the habitable zone almost ensures life elsewhere in our galaxy. If we find evidence of life on Mars, life outside our solar system becomes a mathematical certainty.

It is not our technology that limits our travel to other star systems, it is the sheer enormous distance that makes it nearly impossible.

Remember that human radio signal that have escaped into space have only created a circle about 200 light years in diameter and radios aves travel AT the speed of light.

Our "reach" in the Universe is incredibly small.

[Confusious]

2. Alcubierre drive

10x faster then the speed of light.

[MAD Dave]

5. Way Cool!

I'd never head of that. What an interesting concept. I bet the pocket of high energy particles is less of a problem than executed as well.

We may just visit some of our neighbours.

[DryRain]

3. And this is ONLY our own Milky Way Galaxy!

How many galaxies are out there? Not just a few, I recall.

For example, in 1999 the Hubble Space Telescope estimated that there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe, and recently with the new camera HST has observed 3,000 visible galaxies, which is twice as much as they observed before with the old camera. We're emphasizing "visible" because observations with radio telescopes, infrared cameras, x-ray cameras, etc. would detect other galaxies that are not detected by Hubble. As observations keep on going and astronomers explore more of our universe, the number of galaxies detected will increase

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html

[Javaman]

4. So not just billions and billions of stars but planets too! nt

[TupperHappy]

7. "Bill-yuns and bill-yuns"

Paging Carl Segan...

[FiveGoodMen]

6. Paging Dr. Drake...