Habitable Exoplanets in our Galaxy
Source
Based on the detection of 4,034 exoplanet candidates and their frequency around Sun-like stars, Bryson and his team simulated the distribution of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way and concluded that the number of Earth-like planets is larger than we previously thought.
They found that 40 to 60 percent of Sun-like stars have rocky Earth-like planets in their habitable zones, compared to previous estimates of 20 to 50 percent.
There are 10 billion Sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which could mean there are about 5 billion habitable planets in our galaxy.
"This is really impressive work," said Hugh Osborn of MIT, who was not involved in the study.
Bryson and his colleagues studied exoplanets with radii 0.5 to 1.5 times that of Earth, focusing on those that may be rocky.
They also observed stars with an age and temperature similar to that of the Sun, around 800°C.
"Outside this temperature range, roughly centered on solar temperatures, stars begin to behave very differently from our Sun, including the amount of radiation they emit, their position in the electromagnetic spectrum, and their lifetime."
"And the planets around them! " said study co-author Jesse Christiansen of Caltech.
Osborne said there have been many efforts to find frequencies of Earth-like planets before, but this is different.
He used more data, ran the simulations in new ways, accounted for the possibility that some of Kepler's candidates were not planets, and only looked at asteroids that received a similar amount of light as Earth.
"Overall, these are improvements over several previous studies and therefore increase
credibility," he said.
This is not the final result. In fact, the final figure may be higher, Christiansen said.
"Currently, our uncertainty is largely due to the small number of candidates we have in the parameter space of interest," he said. "So until we get more data, it will be difficult to really reduce those error bars."
Either way, this is an exciting result. "It suggests that there are many Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars, which we will study in detail over the next few decades," Osborne said.
"Perhaps this lends credence to the idea that if Earth-like planets are common, then life could also be common.
0
0
0.000
Source of potential text plagiarism
There is reasonable evidence that this article has been spun, rewritten, or reworded. Posting such content is considered plagiarism and/or fraud. Fraud is discouraged by the community and may result in the account being Blacklisted.
Guide: Why and How People Abuse and Plagiarise.
If you believe this comment is in error, please contact us in #appeals in Discord.