There's something out there
One of the big news items today is the discovery of another planet that might have a similar temperature to that of Earth! It might have water and life!
Ignoring the fact that it's probably a bit tricky to actually measure the temperature of a planet 26 light-years away from here (my body temperature thermometer has to be held about an inch from your head. I realise NASA probably has some better kit but still...) and that the atmosphere of the planet is likely to be a huge influence, this is hardly news.
Let's look at a few figures... there are estimated to be about 10^22 stars in the universe. This is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars (Interestingly, this is about 100 stars for each grain of sand in the world) This is worked out by working out how many stars there are in the Milky Way (about 400 billion), and then how many galaxies there are in the universe (a lot). The galaxies are kind of based on what Hubble could detect and extrapolated.
In reality, this is probably a low estimate.
So, let's say one only in a million stars has planets. That's 100,000,000,000,000,000 stars with planets. Let's say only one in a million of those has planets within the relevant "band" that will support life and water. That's 100,000,000,000 planets. A hundred billion planets that could support life and water. And remember, these are low estimates on the number of stars. That number could easily be double, treble, or a million times greater.
Doesn't make today's news so special now, does it?
Ignoring the fact that it's probably a bit tricky to actually measure the temperature of a planet 26 light-years away from here (my body temperature thermometer has to be held about an inch from your head. I realise NASA probably has some better kit but still...) and that the atmosphere of the planet is likely to be a huge influence, this is hardly news.
Let's look at a few figures... there are estimated to be about 10^22 stars in the universe. This is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars (Interestingly, this is about 100 stars for each grain of sand in the world) This is worked out by working out how many stars there are in the Milky Way (about 400 billion), and then how many galaxies there are in the universe (a lot). The galaxies are kind of based on what Hubble could detect and extrapolated.
In reality, this is probably a low estimate.
So, let's say one only in a million stars has planets. That's 100,000,000,000,000,000 stars with planets. Let's say only one in a million of those has planets within the relevant "band" that will support life and water. That's 100,000,000,000 planets. A hundred billion planets that could support life and water. And remember, these are low estimates on the number of stars. That number could easily be double, treble, or a million times greater.
Doesn't make today's news so special now, does it?
posted by Nej at
1:15 pm
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