Milky Way Stuffed With an Estimated 50 Billion Alien Worlds

astroengine writes "Using data extrapolated from the early Kepler observations of 1,235 candidate exoplanets, mission scientists have placed an estimate on the number of alien worlds there are in our galaxy. There are thought to be 50 billion exoplanets, 500 million of which are probably orbiting within their stars' habitable zones."

Comments

Re:2001

[MichaelSmith]

I watched 2001 again recently and noticed something new (for me). In the first scene which shows the space pod in the room at the end you see an internal display which alternates between "LIF" and something like "NONEXIST". We think we see this from Bowman's POV, but it seems the pod doesn't think Bowman is alive at all.

Re:Oblig.

[Third Position]

Beyond that, if we go there and find intelligent life, then it'll be much easier to establish a relationship with a species that breathes our air, has an overlapping thermal range of comfort, and lives under gravity and pressure conditions comparable to our own.

I don't know about that. We don't seem to be able to establish much of a relationship even with dolphins or whales, reasonably intelligent species on our own planet. Indeed, they apparently have no interest at all in establishing a relationship with us. In fact, besides humans, I can think of very few species which fraternize outside with other species, unless they've been bred for it by humans. We may be the exceptional case rather than the typical one.

Establishing relationships might turn out to be a tricky affair, even with life which has evolved under similar conditions.