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Following a nine-year mission that ended in 2018 after running out of fuel, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope identified around 300 million planets that could be habitable in the Milky Way.
This trip to discover so many exoplanets (planets that orbit stars outside the solar system) took place from 2009 to 2018. In addition to these criteria, the telescope was looking for exoplanets that orbit their stars at approximately the same distance that the Earth moves around the Sun.
An updated analysis, which first appeared in the Astronomical Journal, attempted to put into perspective how many of these places can support life. Putting forward what was considered a “conservative” estimate, the researchers believe that at least half of the sun-like stars could have planets with water. According to another estimate, this one considered more optimistic, no less than 75% of the planets could meet the same standard.
The study was launched with the aim of stabilizing the amount of planets discovered that might actually resemble Earth. To do this, they examined the distance between each exoplanet from its mother star, while also evaluating the temperature of said star and the amount of light energy released.
On the NASA website, study lead author Steve Bryson posted a statement that should make it easy to understand why this is important.
“Kepler once told us that there are billions of planets, but now we know that a good chunk of those planets could be rocky and habitable,” Bryson said. “While this result is far from a final value and the water on a planet’s surface is only one of many life-supporting factors, it is extremely exciting that we have calculated [that] these worlds are shared with such confidence and precision.
Co-author Ravi Kopparapu added to this by also highlighting how critical previous data from ESA (European Space Agency) was.
“We have always known how to define habitability simply in terms of the physical distance of a planet from a star, so that it is neither too hot nor too cold, left us to make many assumptions,” said Kopparapu . “Gaia’s data on the stars has allowed us to look at these planets and their stars in an entirely new way.”
“Not all stars are the same,” he added. “And neither does every planet.”
As for the number of these “close” places, current calculations establish that slightly smaller number, indicating that there are at least four seated between 20 and 30 light years from your current location.
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