Published on March 28th, 2012 | by James Johnson
0Tens Of Billions Of Habitable Planets Located In Milky Way Say Researchers
A new discovery by astronomers have them predicting that there could potentially be tens of billions of planets in the Milky Way where life might exist.
Researchers found that those planets exist in a habitable zone that is close enough to a star to allow for water to flow while temperatures would be in the right range to sustain life.
The team in Europe says the planets they have found are “super-Earths” which range from one to 10 times larger than Earth and orbit roughly 40% of the 160 billion red dwarf stars in the Milky Way.
After studying 102 planets researchers found that many were rocky planets that are more like Earth and less like Jupiter and Saturn which are both massive gas giants.
Scientists do warn however that in order for the super-Earths to have water they would have to be very close to the red dwarfs which would allow lethal UV rays and radiation to penetrate the atmosphere.