One In Five Sun-Like Stars May Have an Earth-Like Planet

The Bad Astronomer writes "A new study, looking at over 40,000 stars viewed by the Kepler spacecraft, indicates that 22% of stars like the Sun should have Earth-like planets orbiting them — planets that are similar in size to our home world and with a surface temperature hospitable for liquid water. There are some caveats (they don't include atmospheric issues like the greenhouse effect, which may reduce the overall number, or at cooler stars where there may be many more such planets) but their numbers indicate there could be several billion planets similar to Earth in the Milky Way alone."

Comments

Maybe won't make any difference

[gmuslera]

If the speed of light is the absolute max speed in the universe, with no shortcuts in practice, getting somewhere outside of local star group won't be ever possible, and the same will be for everyone else, no matter how advanced they are, and how much similarities are between their culture and ours (at least, our culture willingness to go to space and communicate with others). And, of course, there is time, they should be at the right stage of their civilization, of the 4.5billon years of this planet just in the last 100 we were sending and trying to hear signals to/from somewhere else, and not sure for how much time we will be around. And if well could be earth-like planets "close", sending an expedition even to the closest solar system to just plant a flag is outside our reach, maybe for centuries (and getting there and back will take even more centuries)

The universe may be full of life and advanced civilizations, and we probably won't ever know that someone else is out there. Nor them.