NASA has discovered 300 million potentially habitable planets in the Milky Way



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After the nine years spent by the space telescope Kepler from NASA identify thousands and thousands of planets in Milky WayScientists from around the world have analyzed the data collected and determined that these planets, in our galaxy, are capable of supporting liquid water on their surface.

According to some details that were known, these planets are rocky and capable of holding liquid water on their surface, making them habitable. “This calculation is exciting,” they said from NASA.

It concerns 300 million planets potentially habitable which, according to experts, is the closest 20 light years from Earth.

“This is the first time that all the pieces have been put together to deliver a reliable measure of the number of potentially habitable planets in the galaxy, ”the co-author said Jeff Coughlin, researcher on exoplanets at the SETI Institute and director of Kepler’s Office of Science. “This is a key term in Drake’s equation, which is used to estimate the number of transmissible civilizations; we are one step closer on the long road to finding out if we are alone in the cosmos.”

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Previous estimates on determining the number of potentially habitable exoplanets in our galaxy were largely based on the planet’s distance from its star. This new research also considers how much light reaches the planet from its star, which would affect the likelihood that the planet could contain liquid water. To do this, the team looked at not only Kepler’s data, but the file as well data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission about how much energy the planet’s star emits.

“Know how common the different types of planets are it is extremely valuable for the design of upcoming exoplanet research missions“said co-author Michelle Kunimoto, who worked on this paper after completing her PhD in exoplanet occurrence rates at the University of British Columbia. and recently joined the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, team at the Institute of Massachusetts Technology “Surveys targeting potentially habitable small planets around sun-like stars will rely on results like these to maximize their chances of success.”

JD / CP

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