The First Cosmic Census of Planets Estimated

The first cosmic census of planets in our galaxy has been estimated and the ‎numbers are enormous: at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way.‎ About 500 million of planets are found in zones where life could exist. The ‎data was extrapolated from the results obtained from NASA’s Kepler ‎telescope.‎

Kepler has so far found 1,235 planet candidates, with 54 in the Goldilocks ‎zone, where life could possibly exist. Kepler’s main mission was to detect ‎planets, especially potentially habitable ones, in our galaxy. ‎

The probability that one star has planets circling around them is one in every ‎two stars.‎ The likelihood of a star supporting life systems is one in two hundred stars. ‎The above estimates are valid only for the present range of access that could ‎be assessed by Kepler in a given direction. Based on the frequency data ‎available, the total number of planets in the milky way has thus been ‎estimated. A Yale scientist revised the count of planets from 100 billion to ‎‎300 billion last year. This figure is the estimate for one galaxy, and ‎apparently there are 100 billion galaxies around us!‎

So let us hopefully look for the day when aliens from other planets set their ‎foot on earth or we earthlings travel to the nearest inhabitable planet!‎