We knew our galaxy was big, but it just got a whole lot bigger - an international team of researchers have discovered that our galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets. And a number of these are apparently smaller planets like Earth, rather than larger gas giants.
According to Stephen Kane, one of the authors of the study at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute in Pasadena, “not only are planets common in the galaxy, but there are more small planets than large ones. This is encouraging news for investigations into habitable planets.”
Basically, the estimate for the number of terrestrial planets has risen to about 10 billion.
This, in addition to the increasing number of planets in the 'Goldilocks Zone' - the area in the solar system where the planet is close enough and far away enough from the sun for life to occur - dramatically raises the chances that there is life out there somewhere, or if we eventually manage to get that far out into space, that there are habitable planets.
Of course, as to whether said alien life has progressed to our level, or are instead huge blue cats with funky hair remains to be seen.
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