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22% of Sun-like Stars have Earth-sized Planets in the Habitable Zone
The “Goldilocks” zone around a star is where a planet is neither too hot nor too cold to support liquid water. Illustration by Petigura/UC Berkeley, Howard/UH-Manoa, Marcy/UC Berkeley.
How common are planets like Earth? That’s been a question astronomers and dreamers have pondered for decades, and now, thanks to the Kepler spacecraft, they have an answer. One in five Sun-like stars in our galaxy have Earth-sized planets that could host life, according to a recent study of Kepler data.
“What this means is, when you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 12 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye. That is amazing,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura, who led the analysis of the Kepler and Keck Observatory data.
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© nancy for Universe Today, 2013. |
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Post tags: exoplanets, Extrasolar Planets, habitable zone, Kepler mission
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/106121/22-of-sun-like-stars-have-earth-sized-planets-in-the-habitable-zone/
