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Thread: Billions of Habitable Worlds Likely in the Milky Way

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    Billions of Habitable Worlds Likely in the Milky Way

    Billions of Habitable Worlds Likely in the Milky Way

    by Nancy Atkinson on March 28, 2012




    Could there be ‘tens of billions’ of habitable worlds in our own galaxy? That’s the results from a new study that searched for rocky planets in the habitable zones around red dwarf stars. An international team of astronomers using ESO’s HARPS spectrograph now estimates that there are tens of billions of such planets in the Milky Way galaxy, with probably about one hundred in the Sun’s immediate neighborhood, less than 30 light years away.


    “Our new observations with HARPS mean that about 40% of all red dwarf stars have a super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on the surface of the planet,” said Xavier Bonfils, from IPAG, Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble, France, and the leader of the team. “Because red dwarfs are so common — there are about 160 billion of them in the Milky Way — this leads us to the astonishing result that there are tens of billions of these planets in our galaxy alone.”

    This is the first direct estimate of the number of smaller, rocky planets around red dwarf stars. Add this to another recent finding which suggested that every star in our night sky has at least one planet circling it — which didn’t include red dwarf stars – and our galaxy could be teeming with worlds.

    Read the rest at: http://www.universetoday.com/94347/b...the-milky-way/

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    And people still think we're alone.
    "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"
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    Edit from Victor's List:

    http://www.universetoday.com/94347/b...the-milky-way/

    http://www.openminds.tv/scientists-e...ur-galaxy-911/



    IMAGE #7/1st Image DOWN = Artist’s impression of sunset on
    the SUPER-EARTH world Gliese 667 Cc. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

    COULD THERE be "TENS of BILLIONS" of HABITABLE WORLDS in our own galaxy? That’s
    the results from a new study that searched for rocky planets in the HABITABLE
    ZONES around RED DWARF STARS. An international team of astronomers using ESO’s
    HARPS spectrograph now estimates that there are TENS of BILLIONS of such PLANETS
    in the MILKY WAY Galaxy, with probably ~100 in the SUN’s immediate neighborhood,
    less than 30 light-years away

    THIS IS the first direct estimate of the number of smaller, rocky planets
    around RED DWARF STARS. Add this to another recent finding which suggested
    that every star in our night sky has at least one planet circling it — which
    didn’t include RED DWARF STARS – and our galaxy could be teeming with worlds.

    THIS TEAM used the HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La
    Silla Observatory in Chile to search for exoplanets orbiting the most common
    kind of star in the MILKY WAY — RED DWARF STARS (also known as M dwarfs). These
    stars are faint and cool compared to the SUN, but very common and long-lived,
    and therefore account for 80% of all the stars in the MILKY WAY.

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