Hey, remember how we thought finding Earth-like planets was going to be, like, totally rare and hard and stuff?
Yeah, according to statistical analysis: not so much.
You might remember the Kepler orbiting observatory, which was launched with one mission: find more Earth-like planets. The first data sets are in, and after looking at 150,000 stars, it’s found 1235 possible exoplanets. But most of them are fairly easy to see because they’re blocking the sun, which means they’re out of the habitable zone.
However, from the Kepler data, Wesley Traub crunched some numbers and found that of stars that were like our Sun, rated F, G, or K, there was a 33% chance there was a planet in the habitable zone. That means there are thousands of possibilities.
In short, we’ve got lots of potential Earths. Now to prove they’re there, work on that cold sleep problem, and get off this rock.
[ via the friends of the habitable zone at Technology Review ]