In Milky Way, 100 Billion Planets May Exist in Habitable Zone

Weather.com ^ | March 18, 2015 | Michele Berger

[leopardseal]

It could easily be that most of the habitable planets in the universe are in the neighborhood of dwarf stars and in fact inside the plasma sheath/heliosphere of such stars and, thus, in fact totally undetectable from the outside. Habitable zone would be a meaningless concept for such a situation.

[onedoug]

The Privileged Planet

[Darksheare]

And none of it is my fault.

[baltimorepoet]

I suspect either there are no or too few planets with intelligent life to have made contact with us, or they have deemed humans as too stupid and worthless to make contact with.

If there was even ONE other planet with intelligent life, one would have expected that civilization to have eventually expanded outwards to other systems...

[Moonman62]

Yep. There are several several other factors besides distance from a star.

[Cowboy Bob]

That number, 100 billion, may seem beyond comprehension

That number is nothing. Compare it to the $17 trillion debt that the U.S. has!

[Bullish]

Wowa! Dat's alotta planets!

[fso301]

The potential for liquid water means the potential for life beyond Earth

Mars had plenty of water yet it is a sterile wasteland.

[Vaquero]

I predict many with life

I further predict few or none with life over the single cell stage.

[knarf]

When I get to heaven .... I’ll ask God

[AndyTheBear]

There are many many other galaxies, and according to some, there are other “universes” of galaxies—different space-times that are inaccessible from the one we live in. Some say there are a infinite number of such space-times. That is a lot of planets in deed.

[Vaquero]

If heaven is as described, you will just know the answers.

Wish I still had your belief set.

[TruthInThoughtWordAndDeed]

Or not.

[Vaquero]

They need to send people to Mars to search deep in area where water was present. The rovers just scratch the surface.

Best places to find life in the solar system are Europa or Enceladus

[dr_lew]

On the one hand, yeah. On the other hand the narration is almost arguing against itself, because the scope it describes seems philosophically and religiously nihilistic.

“Look on these works, ye mighty, and despair.”

[dr_lew]

Hey look, it snowed! ( Here in Chitown. )

[BushCountry]

For the ones outside the Goldilocks zone women, children, and minorities are hurt the most.

[ThePatriotsFlag]

I bet it is more like 103.5 billion.

[circlecity]

"Stars in the Milky Way may have 100 billion planets — two, on average, per star — in their habitable zone, the area far enough from the star to avoid the planet getting scorched but close enough for it to potentially hold liquid water,"

That's just one of around 50 very finely tuned variables necessary to make a planet "habitable" like earth. The probabililtiy of even 10 of these variables being present on any given planet is astronomical.