About 300 million potentially habitable planets found in our galaxy

The researchers drew on data from the Kepler telescope, which aims to search for exoplanets, and the Gaia mission, which measures the amount of energy they emit.

According to a new study published in The Astronomical Journal, about 300 million planets in our galaxy may be habitable, the result of a global collaboration between scientists from NASA, the SETI Institute and researchers from international agencies from Brazil to Denmark.

According to a NASA press release, in the new research, scientists drew on data from the Kepler Telescope, whose mission is to search for exoplanets, and the Gaia mission, which measures the amount of energy they emit, and analyzed the planets that They are roughly the same size and structure as Earth, where there may be liquid water, and orbit sun-like stars.

Unlike previous research, the specialists also took into account the temperature of the star and the amount of light it emits towards the planets. All these factors allowed them to conclude that in the Milky Way there are about 300 million planets capable of supporting life, the closest of which are 30 light years from Earth.

“This is the first time that all the pieces have been put together to provide a reliable measure of the number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy. This is a key term in the Drake equation, which is used to estimate the number of transmissible civilizations. We are a step closer to finding out if we are alone in the cosmos, ”said Jeff Coughlin, exoplanet researcher at SETI and director of Kepler’s Department of Science.

This discovery provides some precision to the famous Drake equation, which is based on seven factors, such as the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars that have planets in their orbit, or the period during which an intelligent civilization can exist, including others. The problem is that all of these factors are relative and none are known exactly. Consequently, the formula estimates the possible number of civilizations in our galaxy from one to one hundred million.