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30 Billion Earth Sized Planets?
Tha_Chaotic_1 writes "The BBC is running a story about a prediction that there are around 30 billion earthlike planets in the universe. This comes following the discovery of the 100th gas giant outside our solar system. Optimistic?"
Not to nitpick, but is should be noted that the article states that there are probably around 30 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy, not in the whole universe. A significant point, considering that there are around 10 billion large galaxies and 100 billion dwarf galaxies.
.1% of those have had intelligent life, that's 300,000,000,000,000 planets that have had intelligent life forms in the known universe. Of course, you have to factor in the time spans involved...
Wow, if there are 30 billion in our galaxy, that would make around 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 earth like planets in the known universe. If 1/10th of those are capable of supporting life (a pessimistic view when you consider that at least one out of four in our solar system is capable, not to mention mars and europa), then that's still 30,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets that can support life. If even 1% of those actually have life, and
On a side note, MS word spell checker recognizes europium, but not europa.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
This article contains so much flawed logic, it boggles the mind. First, [t]he latest find is a gas giant and orbits a Sun-like star 293 light-years away. Though how this relates to a 100 light year sphere around earth confuses me. Second, with about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, there could be about 30 billion planetary systems in the Milky Way alone. While the 300 billion stars is correct, a vast majority of them are on the galatic disk or in the galatic core, where the gravity of the densely packed stars would prevent planet formation according to any currently held theory, except maybe Electric Universe. Lastly, most of the exo-solar planets that have been found so far are multiple Jupiter-sized and orbiting so close to the star that it doesn't resemble our solar system, the only one we really know about, making any inferences about the existence of other planets useless and pointless. While 100 exo-solar plants found is a cheer for modern astronomy and a good sign for the likelyhood of ETs, this article uses poor logic to make a bang from a whimper