Astronomers Estimate Milky Way May Have 100 Billion Alien Worlds

astroengine writes "Last year, using the exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope as a guide, astronomers took a statistical stab at estimating the number of exoplanets that exist in our galaxy. They came up with at least 50 billion alien worlds. Today, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., and the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration have taken their own stab at the 'galactic exo-planetary estimate' and think there are at least 100 billion worlds knocking around the Milky Way."

Comments

Sweet

[jhoegl]

Then statistically tell me which planet has Amazonian Women, hot green chicks, and Galactic Girls Gone Wild.
No tentacle monsters though, they will take all our womens!

Re:Sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

No tentacle monsters though, they will take all our womens!

Only the Japanese ones.

Re:Sweet

[Nidi62]

You just want death by snu snu

Re:Sweet

[tenaciousj]

Unfortunately, the probability of you finding one of those just went from 1:50 billion to 1:100 billion.

This Universe Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Why couldn't I be born to a universe with a less restrictive set of physical laws?!

Re:This Universe Sucks

[symbolset]

You were. You just don't know it yet.

100 billion likely way too low

[DumbSwede]

100 Billion is likely too low. Based on a survey of close suns using Doppler shift indicated at least 50% had planetary systems of some sort. I think the future will boost this percentage to 90% or better, probably virtually all suns have some kind of orbiting object that could be termed a planet. Depending on where you draw the line on size this makes for probably more than 2 Trillion alien worlds in the Milky Way alone (which is estimated to have 200-400 billion suns).

As for examining Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) more closely it seems there is little point to single them out. So what if we know they have planets -- everywhere you could point a radio dish there are planets. I am a big supporter of SETI and this is all good news for SETI, but it doesn't do anything to narrow the search.

Re:100 billion likely way too low

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, most of the Earth-like planets in the Milky Way seem to have stargates on them, so exploring those would be relatively easy.

Re:100 billion likely way too low

[wierd_w]

The problem is that unless said aliens are pulling the strings on a galactic core super massive black hole and manipulating the plasma jet to serve as a "fucking huge" high gain antenna, the attenuation of the rf signal by interaction with cosmic dust will turn even a real whopper of a broadcast into white noise before it reaches us.

Basically, they would have to be broadcasting a massively powerful signal capable of killing off lifeforms from the raw energy in the wave before we could detect it at our distance.

Re:100 billion likely way too low

[NotQuiteReal]

It doesn't matter, in your lifetime.

To make a car analogy, for the Slashdot crowd; It is like a bunch of hot chicks driving cool cars, you know they exist, but you will never touch them. Just try to keep your basement tidy, since that is where you have to live. If a '61 'vette drives thru the storm doors, you might get lucky.

Re:100 billion likely way too low

[Belial6]

Best car analogy ever.

Re:100 billion likely way too low

[khallow]

The problem is that unless said aliens are pulling the strings on a galactic core super massive black hole and manipulating the plasma jet to serve as a "fucking huge" high gain antenna

They could always just build a big antenna with some power and decent cooling. And we could do the same. No need to sterilize a galactic core any more than it already has been. Cosmic dust is not that effective an attenuator or we wouldn't be able to see objects billions of light years away.

Re:100 billion likely way too low

[tigersha]

No, the Voyager probes transmit at 23 Watts, which is basically nothing. The entire power system on the craft can generate about 250 Watts, which is used for all the systems. The fact that Nasa can track an object transmitting half the power of a lightbulb 11 billion km away to very fine precision is absolutely the most amazing thing they ever did in the space program IMHO.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question431.htm

Oblig. Arthur C Clarke quote

[Kittenman]

“Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.

Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star.

But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And many--perhaps most--of those alien suns have planets circling them. So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven--or hell.

How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million times farther away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of the next generation. But the barriers of distance are crumbling; one day we shall meet our equals, or our masters, among the stars. "

Re:Drake equation++

[giorgist]

So you went out on your first date, don't be so dramatic.

Re:redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

We are the 0.0000001%...

Re:redundant

[Tsingi]

I think he's trying to say that its not necessary to say alien worlds, just say worlds.

If you just say worlds you have to say a billion and one. That's two extra words.

640 Billion

[flyingfsck]

Well, 640 billion should be enough for anybody...