New 'life in space' hope after billions of 'habitable planets' found in Milky Way

Billions of potentially habitable planets may exist within our galaxy, the Milky Way, raising new prospects that life could exist near Earth, a study has found.

Researchers discovered that at least 100 of the ''super-Earths'' may be on our galactic doorstep, at distances of less than 30 light years, or about 180 trillion miles, from the sun.

Astronomers say the findings were made after conducting a survey of red dwarf stars, which account for about four in five stars in the Milky Way.

They calculate that around 40 per cent of red dwarfs have a rocky planet not much bigger than Earth orbiting the ''habitable zone'', in which liquid surface water can exist.

Scientists say that where there is water, there also could be life although they add that being in the habitable zone is no guarantee that life has evolved on a planet.

Dr Xavier Bonfils, from Grenoble University in France, who led the international team, said: ''Because red dwarfs are so common - there are about 160 billion of them in the Milky Way - this leads us to the astonishing result that there are tens of billions of these planets in our galaxy alone.'

The Telegraph

This is exciting news. It is estimated that tens of billions of habitable planets exist.

reply to post by ollncasino
What do we do if they are inhabited.
Oh, never mind.

Amazing, simply amazing.

It is so naive to say we are alone in this Universe.

reply to post by ollncasino


Whats so exciting about going to other habitable planets and destroying their environment too. Let alone neither you nor me or our great great grandchildren will ever get there. It would take tens of thousands of years with our current technology.

reply to post by ollncasino


Yeah....... so didn't you wonder how many planets there were out there with life on them when you were a kid looking at the stars? So why did they have to build a big telescope to prove this is a possibility? Any idiot that has learned that the sun is a star knows there is probably life up there around one of those billions of stars we see.

reply to post by ollncasino


Good post op.

I mean if you still think we are alone.......I dunno really.

It's easy to be on the side that says we are lone....as you have no burden on proof....IT's challenging to be on the side that wants to discover and prove we are not alone.

Most " Experts " take the easy way out.

And we look up to these people as if they are intelligent..

Just because you think you are a smart scientist who knows everything and you talk a lot doesn't mean you actually do.

One day our ancestors are going to carve a monument in our honor.

That monument is going to be a human with his palm on his forehead.......You know the pic I'm talking about...

Just to remind them not to be as stupid as we were.

Originally posted by RomeByFire
Amazing, simply amazing.

It is so naive to say we are alone in this Universe.

I remember reading somewhere that it is thought that for every grain of sand that exists on planet earth, around about 1,000,000 stars exist. I don't know if that is true, but cerrtainly the number of stars out there is immense.

To imagine that we are the only life in the universe with such huge numbers of stars is somewhat unreasonable.

Good luck inventing a spacecraft capable of traveling at light speed, and then sustaining it for 30 years.

reply to post by WP4YT


Bending time and space via wormholes might speed things up a bit. Im sure there were people, in our recent past, dogging the idea of computers ever being smaller than a warehouse.

reply to post by Jace26


Look at how far we've gotten in 100 years. I wont be surprised if we were able to get to those planets through teleportation in just 50 years. When communication through long distance on a continental basis was so sophisticated and had so many steps to it, whenever it is that phones were first invented, I guarantee you, no one on Earth would've thought we'd be able to see each other from the other side of the world through something called the Internet. No one thought we'd be able to touch glass, input a message, and send it across the world almost instantly. No one thought communication would advance as much as it has in the past 50-60 years. If you ask me, I'd say that communication has been the key to technological advancement on such a large scale, in such a short period of time. Don't assume you know the future, or even try to guess what tomorrow brings us. The future could change in any second, for the better, or for the worse.

reply to post by Snoopy1978


Well good luck in gathering the required energy

Michio Kaku in his book “Parallel Worlds” believes that it would require the energy derived from 100 billion stars or more, other physicists think that one star might do the trick.

I hope there is another way thou

More info here

The timing and frequency of these types of announcements does make me occasionally wonder if they are slowly building up to a much more important announcement down the road. Perhaps like first contact or at least solid proof of there having been something from up there, down here, at some point in the deep past.

Either way, it's fascinating to look up there and consider how many places may be within travel distance if faster than light travel is possible..or warping..or whatever the physics of that whole area are. That is something about 10 levels above my focus in life, but hopefully those who do make it their lives find a way to answer man's oldest question. How to get from here to there.

I do think there are other life forms out there, I just don't think they are going to be from planets orbiting a red dwarf.

The article says something about planets having to be close enough to the red dwarf to receive enough heat radiation, and this greatly increases the chance of harmful ultraviolet radiation hitting the planet, along with solar flares.

Originally posted by RomeByFire
Amazing, simply amazing.

It is so naive to say we are alone in this Universe.

Other than religious nut jobs, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who says we are alone in the universe, but there is a massive difference between acknowledging that and thinking we are being 'visited'. The size of the galaxy and universe work in favor of there being life, plentiful forms of simple life, complex life being rare and intelligent life even rarer....but that also works against us ever coming in to contact with it, you have to remember the timescales involved as well. Humans have only been around for 150,000 years or so, that is an insignificant amount of time.

reply to post by kloejen


Yeah, by the wormhole babble I meant an alternative to rocket power.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Life can form in ways other than we see here on earth. Our present description of life may omit other types of lifeforms from being considered real in our present reality. These forms don't have to be multidimensional beings and their intelligence can be different and Superior to ours beyond our wildest beliefs. I'm sure if man knew they existed he would find a way to kill them. Man would kill god if he came here or they would stick him in a padded cell.

reply to post by FidelityMusic


Communications have changed by leaps and bounds in 200 years but in almost the same amount of time petroleum is still being used to fuel most modes of transportation??

I've been reading such news for a long time. I'm always skeptical as per how the scientists can determine for sure. One day the scientific community indicates that coffee is not good for the health and the next day it is good for the health. Opinions go back and forth on several aspects of our lives let alone something that is trillions of miles away

They cant predict the weather on earth accurately but can definitely see the weather pattern some trillions of miles away and conclude that there are hundreds of habitable planets ?

Oh well. I certainly wont be in my lifetime when humans can actually go back and forth different planets

Originally posted by rickymouse
Life can form in ways other than we see here on earth.

How do you know this?