Out There: Billions and Billions of Habitable Planets (Robin Lloyd)

Created by : Francis Goodwin View profile

  Feb. 19, 2009 (Space.com) -- There are about ten thousand billion billion habitable planets in the observable universe, and some of these Earth-like worlds could be found by a mission set to launch early next month, a leading planet-formation theorist now speculates.

 

  Alan Boss, astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., and author of "The Crowded Universe" (Basic Books), published this month, came up with that rough number by estimating there is about one habitable planet around every sun-like star in the galaxy, of which there are about 10 billion, and multiplying that by the number of galaxies in the universe (about 100 billion).

 This result is inexact of course, so give or take a power of ten or so, Boss said, which is standard for these types of estimates in astronomy.

  "Based on what we already know, the universe is going to turn out to be chock full of habitable planets (i.e. Earth-like worlds), and therefore life is likely to be widespread," said Boss, who discussed these estimates with a group of reporters last weekend in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  Read The Entire Story